LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Shelf 1 .S.53 r C4- 



I 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



N 



By the pame author, 

Miscellanies, Old and New. 

SECOND EDITION. 

258 pp., 12mo. Cloth, bevelled, $1.25. 



BRIAR-HILL LECTURES. 



CERTAIN ASPECTS 



THE CHURCH 



Avdpoo7tos sis evooaiv Karrfpria jxevo^. 

S. Ignat. Epist. ad Phil. Cap. V. 




JOHN COTTON SMITH, D.D. 




Second Edition. 



NEW-YORK : 
T. WHITTAKER, No. 2 BIBLE HOUSE. 
1881. 



The Library 
oh Congress 



Copyright 1880, 
BY 

T. WHITTAKER. 



TO THE 

REV. REUBEN KIMER, RECTOR. 

AND TO THE 

WARDENS AND VESTRYMEN 

OP THE 

IPSWICH, MASS., 
THIS VOLUME OF LECTURES IS 
DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Charity and Truth, 5 

The Liturgy and Christian Union, . . 37 
The Church's Law of Development, . . 65 
The Church's Mission of Reconciliation, . 105 



PREFACE. 



The title " Briar-Hill Lectures" has been 
given to this volume because the lectures or 
sermons which it contains have been written, 
in the retirement of summer months, at " Briar 
Hill," in the town of Ipswich, Mass. Through 
the kindness of the rector and vestry of the 
parish in that place, the author has been able 
not only to witness but, to some extent, to co- 
operate in the work there done for the church. 
With grateful appreciation of this privilege, the 
volume is dedicated to the Rector, Wardens, 
and Vestry of the Church of the Ascension, 
Ipswich, Mass. 

j City of New York, Ascension Rectory, 
! Festival of St. Luke, Oct. 18, 1880. 



OHAEITT AI^D TEUTH. 



Preached at the Ordination of the Eev. 
J. E T. Coolidge, D.D., Apr. 14, 1859. 

" Charity — rejoiceth in the truth." — 1 Cor. 13 : 6. 

The circumstances of this occasion almost 
demand the consideration of the subject upon 
which I am to address you. The ordination 
which has called us together is the consummat- 
ing act of a change in religious doctrines and 
ecclesiastical relations. And the change itself 
brings before the mind the melancholy truth 
that the Christian world is not one household, 
living together in unity of spirit and the bond 
of peace, but rather presents a hostile array of 
rival churches and sects, distracted by mutual 
jealousy and suspicion, and too often tearing 
and rending each other, instead of doing battle 



G CHARITY AND TRUTH. 

with the common foe. This condition of things 
in Christendom presents a most important sub- 
ject for our consideration, and suggests innu- 
merable practical questions. The relations 
which persons calling themselves Christians 
sustain to each other press upon us the appar- 
ently rival claims of Charity and Truth. How 
to be faithful to both is the practical diffi- 
culty. We meet with such questions as these : 
what is the truth ? how much of truth is funda- 
mental ? w r hat is to be insisted upon as neces- 
sary, and what may be left as matter of opin- 
ion ? how far does charity require us to go with 
those who differ from us ? and what obstacles 
does a proper regard for the truth interpose in 
the way of what charity would seem to present 
as so desirable — unity of spirit and of organiza- 
tion among all who profess to be the followers 
of Christ ? 

I shall endeavor, by God's blessing, to lay 
down and illustrate some general principles by 
which such questions as these may perhaps be 
satisfactorily answered. 

It is my earnest desire to be faithful both to 
Charity and Truth ; and although I cannot hope 



CHARITY AND TRUTH, 7 



to meet the views of those with whom truth, 
whatever may be its relative importance, is the 
only consideration, or of those with whom the 
principle of charity is carried to extremes, I 
still trust that no essential truth may be com- 
promised for the sake of charity, and that I 
shall not be held as an enemy to charity be- 
cause I insist upon fundamental truth. My 
only desire is to do something to adjust, in our 
minds, the relations of the two. 

As the first step in our inquiry, it would be 
well to bring before our minds the actual state 
of our community in this respect, so that we 
may ascertain what is the condition of things 
in regard to which the claims of Charity and 
Truth are to be made. 

But there is no time on this occasion to do 
more than simply to notice the fact that there 
are certain tendencies, clearly apparent, in the 
various bodies of Christians into which this 
community is divided. These tendencies may, 
I think, be reduced to three — one toward ra- 
tionalism, one toward superstition, and one 
consisting in a reaction from these extremes to- 
ward evangelical religion. 



8 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



The state of speculative philosophy at the 
present day is such as greatly to accelerate these 
tendencies. Its effect must be to gather various 
religious schools into a few great classes, and to 
define the boundaries of these classes more 
sharply than ever before. The philosophical 
views of Sir William Hamilton, whether true or 
false, are destined, it seems to me, to affect very 
powerfully the great religious tendencies of the 
age. Sir William Hamilton's object was, as is 
well known, to determine the limits of human 
knowledge, and the result of his investigation 
is that we can know logically only the rela- 
tive, the finite, the conditioned ; and that the 
absolute, the unconditioned, and the infinite 
are, strictly speaking, beyond the limits of 
human knowledge. Now, if this philosophy 
becomes prevalent, men will be compelled to 
choose between faith in a divine revelation 
and speculative atheism. Eationalism must 
become atheistic, if reason can give us only 
the relative and the finite, and those who 
are appalled at such a conclusion will be 
compelled to rely implicitly upon divine rev- 
elation for a knowledge of the infinite. Rea- 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



9 



son will take its proper place in relation to 
faith, and Anselm's profound words will be rec- 
ognized as containing the highest wisdom : " I 
do not know in order that I may believe, but 
believe in order that I may know." 

A consideration of these tendencies, it seems 
to me, is sufficient to convince us that there are 
three centres around which the religious ten- 
dencies of the age are gradually gathering them- 
selves, and that three great and distinctly de- 
fined classes will eventually absorb the endless 
diversity of religious opinions which now exists. 
Eeason without faith will find its way to some 
system of philosophic atheism like that of 
Comte. Keason with faith, and in submission 
to it, will lead to some evangelical system — for 
faith must rest upon the Word of God, and 
there is no Protestant system not evangelical in 
which the Word of God has preserved its integ- 
rity. Faith without reason will work itself 
gradually into the superstition of the Church of 
Eome, since those superstitions which have 
most of authority will gradually attract those 
who are superstitiously inclined. 

Upon this view of the present state and ten- 



10 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



dencies of religious opinion among us, we are 
prepared to consider what elements there are 
for cordial sympathy and co-operation in the 
Christian bodies by which we are surrounded. 
There is, of course, in regard to all connected 
with them, and indeed to all mankind, the sa- 
cred duty of charity. TVe are under the most 
solemn obligations to entertain kindly feelings 
toward those who differ most widely from us. 
But what we wish to know is, whether we may 
not, without any compromise of the truth, 
come into closer connection with those who 
call themselves by the name of our Master. Our 
own Church has labored heretofore under the 
suspicion of being specially exclusive and un- 
charitable ; and it becomes us to inquire whether 
we may not have appeared so, even where the 
interests of the truth imposed no obligation 
upon us ; and whether we may not, therefore, 
have stood in the way of a closer union among 
Christ's people, even when that union required 
no compromise of the truth. Every one's duty 
in this respect is to be determined by what he 
considers as necessary or fundamental truth. 
And yet, in this very respect, there is danger of 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



11 



a violation of charity ; for why, it may be 
asked, should one Christian refuse fellowship 
with another whose learning and religious char- 
acter are at least equal to his own ? It will, I 
trust, be thought by those who do not hold 
evangelical views that the apparent want of 
charity in those who make these views funda- 
mental is, at least in some degree, justified by 
the fact that they do not stand simply upon 
their own reason — which may not be any better 
than that of their opponents — nor simply upon 
their own interpretation of the Scriptures — 
which they will admit is fallible — but also upon 
the fact that these few fundamental points have 
stood forth prominently in all ages of Chris- 
tianity — sometimes, indeed, with a dim radi- 
ance like that of a light-house glimmering at 
midnight upon a dark, tempestuous sea, but 
sometimes glowing like suns in the heavens. 
In taking our stand upon orthodox and evan- 
gelical views as fundamental, we are sustained 
not only by our own reason, not only by our in- 
terpretation of Scripture, but by the whole past 
of the Christian Church. It is, therefore, in 
no spirit of arrogance, in no want of the largest 



12 CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



charity, we trust, but in sincere humility, with 
a willingness to be led first of all by the Bible, 
and then by the voice of the Christian world in 
all ages, that we feel bound, in fidelity to the 
truth, to insist upon the great evangelical doc- 
trines of redemption as fundamental in the 
Christian system. 

And yet I think we may have been justly 
chargeable with a want of charity toward those 
who differ from these views, by failing to enter 
somewhat into their views of things, to ascer- 
tain the various steps by which they have ar- 
rived at their results, and to construe favorably 
certain statements which perhaps mean some- 
thing to us very different from their original 
intent. And I think we may have erred greatly 
in charging certain consequences, which they 
expressly disown, upon the opinions of men — 
for this is one of the most glaring violations of 
charity. A system itself may properly be 
charged with any consequences with which we 
regard it as logically connected, but not the 
men by whom the system is held. They are to 
be judged by the views which they avow, not 
by those which they disown and reject. 



CHA1UTY AND TRUTH, 



13 



I doubt also whether we have sufficiently con- 
sidered those circumstances out of which the 
Unitarian movement, for with that we are now 
specially concerned, took its rise, and the pe- 
culiar aspect of Christianity to which it was op- 
posed. At a time when Christian doctrine 
scarcely existed in New England, except in the 
most rigid Calvinistic form, there was a natural 
reaction, and as there were no ancient creeds 
or liturgy to limit this reaction, it soon assumed 
the form of Pelagianism of the most decided 
type, and was developed into the Unitarianism 
of New England. Now, it seems to me that 
every system is entitled to the benefit, if such 
it is, of being considered in reference to that to 
which it is opposed. I yield to no one in my 
admiration for that lofty and uncompromising 
piety which has been fostered under the sternest 
Calvinism ; but I cannot wonder that when 
peaceful and prosperous days came to the early 
New England Christians, the hearts of some 
yearned for a faith of milder and more attract- 
ive features. The old Calvinism of our fathers 
was a faith which seems well suited to the hard- 
ships and privations of their lot. It invested 



14 



CHABITY AND TRUTH. 



with such reality and life the covenant relation 
between God and the believer, and so concen- 
trated, as it were, the whole compassion and 
love of God upon the little body of the faithful, 
that it is no wonder that they clung to it while 
want and suffering compelled them to wring 
from religion every consolation it could afford. 
This system, as it was held by our fathers, was 
like some of our own New England mountains 
in the midst of wintry storms — cold, rugged, im- 
movable masses of rock, upon which a thousand 
tempests might wreak their fury in vain. But 
when these wintry days passed by, what wonder 
is it that men were allured by the smiling, ge- 
nial landscape of the valleys, and wandered 
away until they found themselves at last be- 
wildered in the midst of barren deserts ? 

It seems to me also uncharitable to withhold 
from those who have been involved in the 
Unitarian movement the praise which is due to 
great pecuniary liberality and to general kindli- 
ness of disposition. This has been, I freely ad- 
mit, in no slight degree characteristic of those 
connected with this system. We are surrounded 
by enduring monuments of this liberality, and 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 15 



this kindliness, in ten thousand forms, has left 
its memorials in innumerable sorrowing hearts 
which it has comforted and relieved. 

In considering this system, and particularly 
that part of it which approaches most nearly to 
evangelical doctrine, we must, in charity, it 
seems to me, make a distinction between the 
faith of the heart and the head. It must be, of 
course, upon this ground that we believe in the 
Christian character of those who do not specu- 
latively have faith in Christ as a divine Saviour. 
I doubt not that there is the want of this 
speculative belief on the part of multitudes, 
whose hearts trust as implicitly as ours in the 
sacrifice and intercession of a Divine Eedeemer. 
They may not admit this idea in words, and 
yet their Christian life is kept burning and 
shining by that eternal fire in the heart which 
supreme love and adoration for the Lord Jesus 
alone could have kindled. 

But with such charitable dispositions, and 
with so much of sympathy in reference to cer- 
tain phases of this system, what difficulty stands 
in the way of a full and free fellowship so far 
as doctrine is concerned ? Why not, it may be 



1G 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



said, waive these points of doctrine ? But here 
we are met at once by the demands of what we 
hold to be, on the ground of reason, of Scrip- 
ture, and the testimony of all ages of the Chris- 
tian Church, necessary and fundamental truth. 
We must insist upon it ; conscience will not al- 
low us to waver one hair's breadth in regard 
to the foundation facts of Christianity : the 
Trinity in the Godhead, the supreme divinity 
and expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the na- 
tive depravity of man, and the regenerating and 
sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Our char- 
ity goes, as we trust we have shown, where these 
truths are denied. Our sympathies are called 
out most largely and warmly toward those who 
are working their way to a recognition of them. 
We are glad to claim fellowship even before the 
language of such comes up to the precision and 
explicitness which we should desire. If there 
is any holding back with us, it is when the real 
vital point is wanting. For it must be evident 
that the highest view which may be taken of 
the character of Christ, even the attributing of 
divinity to him, is no appreciable approach to 
our position, unless he is distinctly recognized 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 17 



as God, and the possibility of his being God 
and at the same time making in the flesh an ex- 
piation for our sins, found in the personal dis- 
tinction in the Godhead. Since, if he is not 
really and truly God, however lofty may be his 
position, he is still a created being, infinitely 
inferior, therefore, to God, and no proper ob- 
ject for our adoration and supreme love. The 
strongest language which can be used, consis- 
tently with such a view, does not help the mat- 
ter. We feel that we have not found Christ. 

While such is my view of the positive and im- 
perative demands of the truth, it seems to me 
that there is still much more room for charity 
in this direction than, perhaps, we have been ac- 
customed to suppose. I have little confidence 
in the efficacy of the argument with Unitarians, 
as it has been usually conducted. It rests upon 
no principles which we hold in common. A 
generous appreciation of the position of those 
who differ from us, together with evidences of a 
hearty and anxious desire on our part that they 
might have the happiness of knowing Christ in 
all the glory and saving power with which he is 
invested, would do more than ten thousand ar- 



18 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



guments to impress them favorably toward our 
views. Argument may be misunderstood. A 
warm and generous heart, filled with anxious de- 
sire for the spiritual welfare of others, is always 
recognized and felt. 

I wish to say a few words in reference to our 
relations with those who do not differ from us 
materially in point of doctrine, but who hold 
entirely different views in respect to ecclesiasti- 
cal organization. The circumstances which call 
us together at this time suggest this topic ; for 
this ordination consummates not only a change 
in points of doctrine, but also in ecclesiastical 
relations. It is a profession, not only of ortho- 
dox doctrine, but also of adherence to the Epis- 
copal Church. I for one am very anxious that 
our views in respect to the organization of the 
Church should be so held 5 id stated as to 
conform to what we hold to be the truth, and 
at the same time relieve us from the suspicion 
of being exclusive and uncharitable. The 
points in our principles or practice which are 
usually objected to as such are the reordination 
of those who have not been episcopally ordained, 
and the fact that we do not invite into our pul- 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



19 



pits those who have not received episcopal ordi- 
nation. This has, I admit, at first view, the 
aspect of being uncharitable and exclusive. 
But we are certainly entitled to claim that, in 
the exercise of charity toward us, the nature 
and reason of our position should be considered. 
We believe that the ministry, as constituted 
with us, is apostolic ; that is, to take the very 
lowest view of it, that such a ministry existed 
in the time of the Apostles. And to say noth- 
ing more, it is not perfectly clear, as I under- 
stand it, to those disagreeing with us that such 
was not the case. But at any rate, we believe 
that it was so. Now, there is nothing unchari- 
table, certainly, in such a belief. It relates 
simply to a question of historical fact, and if it 
obliges us to the pursuit of a certain course, 
that course cannot be uncharitable. We may 
hold this point to be a very important one ; we 
may firmly believe that the preservation of the 
faith is connected with it and dependent upon 
it. But how can we express our adherence to 
this view, except by our practice ; and how by 
our practice, if we make no distinction between 
a ministry which does conform to what we 



20 CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



believe to be the apostolic model and one that 
does not ? It is not with us, as is often sup- 
posed, a mere question of polity. In that case 
we admit that our position would be justly 
chargeable with exclusiveness. But it is a ques- 
tion of the preservation of the truth . We glad- 
ly recognize the presence and the saving influ- 
ence of the truth in other Christian bodies. 
Our Church has never denied or questioned the 
validity of the official acts of ministers of the 
Gospel not episcopally ordained. We make no 
claims to a ministry more learned, more holy, 
or more successful than that of others ; but we 
do claim that with our conscientious conviction 
that the ministry as cons tituted by the Apos- 
tles is an indispensable means to the most im- 
portant end, and that, although the truth is 
now to be found elsewhere, still the interests of 
Christ's kingdom, in the succession of ages, are 
bound up with the constitution of the Church ; 
we do claim, I say, that we are not uncharitable 
jn putting these principles into practice, and 
establishing the rule, that those who minister 
in our congregations shall be episcopally or- 
dained. To sanction any other practice would 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



21 



be to deny in act that which we profess in 
word. 

This division of the Christian world, and of 
our own Church also, into various parties, 
sometimes contending so bitterly with each 
other, is a most melancholy spectacle, and one 
is led to inquire whether it must always be so. 
Will the interests of the truth always require 
these divisions and mutual jealousies and mis- 
understandings ? If so, how poor a preparation 
are we here making for the union of the heav- 
enly world ! I think, however, that we may 
readily detect in all this the operation of a law 
which is working beneficially. We are ap- 
proaching a time, I firmly believe, when those 
who agree at all will agree more perfectly ; when 
systems shall have worked themselves out to 
their results ; and when what is unessential 
shall have been eliminated in the process, and 
the great body of believers shall be found gath- 
ered around the few fundamental principles of 
the Gospel. But that time is not yet. And 
still, while we see how far we are from such a 
state of things, we may see how it is that even 
parties and party spirit are working to that 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



end. A simple love for the truth and a noble 
spirit of charity are what must be secured be- 
fore that end is attained. And in the meantime 
these very parties and f actions, under God's prov- 
idence are carrying things forward in that di- 
rection. No one will claim that the best re- 
sults, in Church or in State have been brought 
about by the success of the views of one or 
another party, but by the action and reaction of 
one upon the other. So that it is unquestion- 
ably a fact that better results have on the whole 
been obtained by the combined action of these 
various parties, than if one, however pure, had 
directed and controlled the movement alone. 
And that is simply to say that God is wiser 
than any or all of those whom he employs as 
his instruments in the world. 

I trust it will not be thought irrelevant if, in 
conclusion, I endeavor to point out some re- 
spects in which, in my judgment, our own 
Church is favorably situated in reference to the 
desire which prevails for more of unity among 
the followers of Christ. I fear, indeed, that 
any practical results in that direction are still 
far distant, but it is not in vain, it seems to me, 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



23 



that the subject is agitated even now. I am 
glad, at all events, of the opportunity of speak- 
ing a word which has for its object the bring- 
ing more nearly together of those who love the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

On a moment's reflection we shall see that 
our own Church can meet, as no other Christian 
body can, this longing for union of which I 
have spoken. If there is to be a union of 
Christian people, it must be upon some basis 
of truth admitted by all and recognized as 
fundamentally necessary. To have no doc- 
trinal basis whatever, no creed at all, is lib- 
eral indeed ; but it is so liberal that it reaches 
beyond Christianity, and may include the infi- 
del, the Jew, the Mohammedan. The system 
ceases to be necessarily Christian, when it dis- 
owns a creed. To say that the Bible is the 
creed and the only creed helps the matter 
somewhat, to be sure, but we soon find that the 
question comes up as to the authority of the Bi- 
ble, or as to what constitutes the Bible. The 
system cannot pronounce decisively upon these 
points without violating its principle of not 
having any creed. It must leave every one not 



24 



CHARITY AND TRU1H. 



only to his own interpretation of the Bible, but 
to determine also what his Bible shall be ; and 
thus, it is evident, the whole superstructure of 
Christianity may be swept away. I have known 
men who claimed to have no creed but the Bi- 
ble, and yet who considered only three chapters 
in the whole Bible as of divine authority. It 
is evident, therefore, that those who reject 
creeds altogether cannot furnish a basis for the 
union of Christians. 

Then, on the other hand, there is the diffi- 
culty which is the opposite of this. There are 
others who have creeds, but who have incorpo- 
rated into them certain articles which they hold, 
indeed, as desirable to be believed, but which 
even they themselves do not hold to be essential 
to Christian faith. Such articles are those 
which relate to the relation between the sov- 
ereignty of God and the agency of man, or to 
the proper subjects for baptism, etc., about 
which, as all agree, Christians may differ. But 
just so soon as a number of Christians associate 
themselves together and establish as a test ol 
communion with them a belief in certain arti- 
cles, some of which they themselves admit not 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



to be essential to Christian faith, just so soon 
do they depart from the true idea of a Church of 
Christ, since their terms of communion exclude 
some whom Christ himself has received. Their 
basis excludes the infidel, it is true, but it ex- 
cludes many a Christian also, and cannot, there- 
fore, furnish a basis of union among those who 
are the followers of Christ. 

Now, notice for a moment the position of our 
own Church in reference to this matter. Have 
we not, in the providence of God, a basis for 
union in a creed at once comprehensive and 
fundamental ; so as to exclude everything out- 
side of Christianity, and include everything 
within it ? We require belief only in those few 
fundamental facts of Christianity which are de- 
clared in the Apostles' creed. The clergy, in- 
deed, are required to subscribe the Thirty-Nine 
Articles, but not so the people. The creed of 
our Church is the simple creed of the Church 
in all ages, distinctive as Christianity itself, 
and yet comprehending every form and variety 
of Christian development. Here, then, and 
here only, is to be found, in this community, a 
Church which can satisfy this longing and rest- 



26 CHARITY AND TRUTH. 

less striving after Christian union. It is the 
Church which the masses need, and toward 
which they must necessarily tend when its true 
position and character are once understood. 
Whoever, then, is a friend to union among the 
followers of Christ, let him ask himself if there 
is anywhere so good a prospect of its promotion 
as in our own Church. I set aside now all 
claims as to the divine or even apostolic origin 
of our organization. I say nothing about that, 
but if you desire that the people of Christ 
should be one, so as to oppose one common 
front to the power of sin and death, then I ask 
you solemnly to consider whether such a con- 
summation is possible except upon the basis of 
a creed like ours, which excludes all who do not 
hold what is universally admitted to be the 
Christian faith, and includes all who do. 

But in connection with this desire for union, 
there is springing up everywhere a desire for 
something which will secure the permanence 
and stability of Christian faith. One great 
cause of this want of permanence is to be found 
in these very divisions which we have been con- 
sidering. The consequence of having no creed 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



27 



is the drifting off of certain portions, at least, 
of the body toward infidelity ; and the conse- 
quence of having too minute and particular a 
creed is that any variation from it must be fol- 
lowed by separation from the body by which it 
is held. And so the process of division goes on^ 
until men find it hard to tell what is funda- 
mental, since every variety of religious opinion 
is represented by some Christian sect. Now 
there is this peculiarity of the position of the 
Church which fits it to secure the permanence 
and stability of Christian truth. It has the 
most powerful conservative influences, and yet, 
at the same time, it admits without difficulty 
schools of doctrine which, in any other system, 
must be followed by the endless process of di- 
vision. We all know that the Calvinist and the 
Arminian, the Baptist and the Psedobaptist, 
those who hold high views and those who hold 
low views of the Sacraments, may all find a 
home in the Church ; while at the same time 
the Church, unshaken by these various and 
conflicting systems, holds forth in her liturgy 
and creeds the fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity, and proclaiming the remission of sins by 



28 CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



faith in Jesus Christ, passes on unchanged 
through the succeeding generations of the 
world. 

Let me say a word in reference to the need 
which exists for more of reverence and dignity 
in the services of the sanctuary, and to the con- 
viction vhich is becoming quite prevalent that 
these are to be secured only by liturgical wor- 
ship. The taste and sober sense of the commu- 
nity are slowly working toward this result. 
Now, suppose that a taste for liturgical worship 
becomes very general, where is a liturgy that 
will be at all satisfactory to be found except that 
of the Episcopal Church ? Other liturgies are 
admitted to be defective, by those who compile 
them, just so far as they differ from that of the 
Church. It is impossible that any other can 
have the impressiveness of this, since none 
other can possibly have its associations. There 
is no other liturgy which has come down to us 
with the accumulated wealth of the associations 
of every Christian age, none other which has 
about it the precious savor of the piety of the 
confessors and martyrs and apostles of the 
Church. This is an advantage which no one 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



29 



pretends to deny, and which the Church alone 
possesses. 

I wish finally to say that it is my deep con- 
viction that the system and methods of our 
Church are favorable to union among Chris- 
tians, since it is fay them that the prevalent in- 
fidelity of the day may be most successfully met 
and resisted. This infidelity presents itself in 
three principal forms, first, that of the positive 
philosophy, which denies certainty to any 
knowledge but that of phenomena, and which 
would limit all man's thoughts aui. efforts 
and aspirations to the visible and wigible 
things by which we are surrounded ; then that 
which denies the supornaturalism of Christiani- 
ty and resolves its wondrous miracles into nat- 
ural events or mythical narrations ; and then 
that of Pantheism, the worship of nature or 
of heroes, and the foundation of that direful 
doctrine of the necessary progress of the hu- 
man race, by which it passes, under the opera- 
tion of irresistible laws, through one form after 
another of religious belief, until Christianity 
itself shall give place at last to a higher reli- 
gion. Then there is the amazing imposture or 



30 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



delusion of Spiritualism, that strange mingling 
of fanaticism and shrewd calculation, the 
facts of which are to be found either in skil- 
ful jugglery or the effects of natural laws as yet 
imperfectly understood. All these are hostile 
to the true progress and well-being of society, 
are hostile to morals and to the purity and hap- 
piness of social relations, are fatal to the true 
dignity and excellence of man, and leave him in 
his guilt, without a Saviour or the hope of ever- 
lasting life. 

Now, every one who wishes well to his coun- 
try, and desires the salvation of men, must be 
anxious to know in what way this fearful onset 
of infidelity may be rolled back. To meet these 
various systems by argument seems to me to be 
doing but little to accomplish the result. TV hat 
we want is something which will have a silent 
and constant influence in the community, some 
system of things visible and audible, to be seen 
and heard of men at all times, and which, as 
monuments of great historic events keep alive 
the sentiment of patriotism, may by its presence 
teach the great lessons of religion. We want 
jome system in the community which in its or- 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



31 



der and arrangements assumes the great facts of 
Christianity, and thus impresses them upon the 
mind. We have such a system in the Church, 
and all will admit that it is not elsewhere to 
be found. It is our whole tendency to present 
the Church both as spiritual and visible ; it is 
the whole tendency of other Christians to pre- 
sent it as spiritual alone. The facts of Christi- 
anity are, so to speak, crystallized in the services 
of the Church into a permanent form. No one 
can tell the incalculable influence of such a sys- 
tem in its ceaseless testimony to the truth. 
More powerful than any argument or any ap- 
peal or any teaching, it moves irresistibly the 
minds of those who are unconscious of its in- 
fluence. Let us have a great institution per- 
vading society, in which the fundamental facts 
of Christianity have clothed themselves with 
forms, and let this institution be ever visibly 
and audibly present, having innumerable re- 
lations with the life of men, and we need have 
no fear of national apostasy and may laugh 
infidelity to scorn. 

There is no time now to speak of the conces- 
sions which we might be willing to make to 



32 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



bring about any practical union among Chris- 
tians. For my part I should consider any con- 
cession for such a purpose as a small sacrifice, 
unless it stood very near the truth as it is in 
Christ Jesus. Charity rejoices in that truth. 
There may be concessions and compromises 
everywhere else, but not there. This truth, and 
whatever is essential to it, must be maintained. 
We feel strong and confident upon such ground 
as this. Elsewhere we may have doubts and 
perplexities, but here the evidences accumulate 
with such vast comprehensiveness and manifold 
relations that no room is left with us for doubt. 
Nature, God's Word, our own consciousness and 
hearts, the history of Christianity, the history 
of the world, all cast their rays upon one com- 
mon centre, the cross of Christ, and from that 
sacred spot beams forth all the light which has 
dispelled the shadows of this fallen world. 
From the darkness of the sepulchre, the Sun of 
Eighteousness arose to enlighten and revive the 
earth. That we are sinners, utterly helpless in 
ourselves, is a fact of which, alas ! we can en- 
tertain no doubt ; that Christ is an Almighty 
Saviour, we also, with all the powers of our be- 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



33 



ing, firmly believe, and it is our only hope o 
final rest and happiness in the heavenly world. 

My Dear Brother : You are now to be 
commissioned to proclaim among us this only 
foundation for our hope of eternal life. I 
doubt not you have endeavored, through your 
whole ministerial career, to preach faithfully to 
sinful men, that they might be brought into the 
ways of holiness and prepared for the heavenly 
world. But a necessity has been laid upon you 
like that which was laid upon the Apostle Paul, 
when he said, " Yea, woe is me if I preach not 
the Gospel." You have, by the experiences of 
your own heart as well as by the diligent study 
of God's word, been brought to see the truth 
as it is in Jesus, and, after many doubts and 
fears, have rested in a conviction, as firm and 
lasting, I trust, as your immortality, that Christ 
is our Almighty Saviour and Eedeemer, to be 
loved with no second love, but to be the object 
of our supreme affection and adoration. I can- 
not take it upon myself to counsel you in refer- 
ence to duties and responsibilities with which 
you are more familiar than I ; but I can express 



34 CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



to you the hearty sympathy, good-will and love 
of those among whom you enter to-day as your 
brethren. And yet suffer me to say a word in 
regard to the responsibilities of your work. It 
is a solemn thing, my brother, to be placed in 
the charge of immortal souls. There are many 
discouragements, many temptations to draw us 
from our duty. But remember that the time is 
short, and that the lips which proclaim the 
blessed news of eternal life will ere long be 
closed and hushed in the silence of the tomb. 
When we think of this we cannot be indifferent 
and unfaithful in our work. And it is a blessed 
thought, familiar, I know, to your own heart, 
that in all our difficulties and trials, Christ is 
with us, and is touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities. 

" I charge thee, therefore, before God and 
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the 
quick and the dead at his appearing and his 
kingdom, preach the Word, be instant in sea- 
son, out of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort with 
all long-suffering and doctrine. . . . Watch 
thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the 
work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy 



CHARITY AND TRUTH. 



35 



ministry." And when the hour of your depar- 
ture draws near, may the remembrance of many 
souls already saved, and many more yet to be 
saved through your ministry, comfort and sus- 
tain you with the blessed assurance that the 
grace of Christ has been sufficient for you ; and 
may you be able in humble and yet full assur- 
ance to exclaim with the Apostle, " I have 
fought a good right, I have finished my course ; 
I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid 
up for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at 
that day." 



THE LITURGY 

AND 

CHBISTIATsT TINTON. 



Peeached in Trinity Chapel, New York, 
Feb. 21, 1864. 

" Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all 
people. ' ' — Isaiah 56 : 7. 

My subject — The Liturgy in its Kela- 
tions to Christian Union — leads me to 
speak of those features of the Liturgy which 
adapt it to be a form of prayer for all people, 
and to promote that unity among Christians 
for which our Sayiour prayed. 

The evils of division among Christians are 
so apparent and terrible that it is high time 
the subject of Christian Union received more 
serious consideration. "We need the concurrent 
views of many observers at different points of 



38 



THE LITURGY 



observation ; and as astronomers, gazing into 
the starry heavens from their many watch-tow- 
ers, penetrate at last the secrets of the order 
and harmony of the universe, so shall we, by 
diligent comparison, arrive, perhaps, at the 
great laws of unity which must prevail in the 
visible kingdom of Christ. 

That there are such laws we cannot doubt. 
To deny it would be to affirm that the ideal 
Christian Church, toward which the actual 
manifestation of it in the world must con- 
stantly tend, is out of all analogy with every 
other department in the universe. The most 
minute and apparently isolated facts resolve 
themselves into systems ; these systems, again, 
are bound together in still wider systems ; com- 
plex laws, as we ascend higher in the scale of 
being, unfold their complex operations and 
assume simpler forms, and so we go from in- 
finite diversity to a higher and higher unity, 
until we find one universe in one God. 

This unity, we should naturally suppose, 
also, must be the final consummation of the 
Church on earth ; for the nearer we come to 
Christ in spiritual experience, the nearer shall 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION 39 



we be to the spirit which prevailed when the 
Church, springing from beneath his feet as he 
ascended into heaven, was one. And this nat- 
ural expectation ripens into confidence when 
we catch the tones of that wonderful prayer 
which our great High Priest offered for us as 
he was about to ascend the altar of sacrifice, 
1 4 That they all may be one, even as thou art 
in me and I in thee, that they also may be 
one in us." 

This unity, if once attained, would naturally 
express itself in common worship. It is a 
question, therefore, which it becomes us to con- 
sider, what form this common worship would 
most reasonably be expected to assume. Each 
one of the many divisions of Christendom 
should consider this in relation to the peculiar 
form which is used by itself. This I purpose 
now doing in regard to the Liturgy, that we 
may see how far it is fitted to be a common 
prayer for all people, and how far its adoption 
is therefore calculated to promote the unity we 
desire. 

The one great indispensable characteristic 
which such a form must possess is universality. 



40 



THE LITURGY 



Let us see, then, what claims the Liturgy has 
to universality : 

L In its origin and the process of its growth. 

II. In its harmony with and adaptation to 
human nature. 

III. In the possibility of its use among all di- 
versities of religious opinion, where fun- 
damental truth is held. 

I. In the first place, then, we are to consider 
its universality in its origin and the process of 
its growth. 

It may seem to savor somewhat of self -glory 
for those of us who enjoy the use of the Litur- 
gy to enlarge upon its excellence and its adap- 
tation to all people ; but it must be remember- 
ed that the Liturgy is not the result of our 
wisdom or choice. We did not make it ; we 
find ourselves in possession of it, a heritage 
handed down to us from the great past. We 
are considering, let it be remembered, the Lit- 
urgy — the Christian Liturgy — a term which, 
in ecclesiastical history, has a meaning so dis- 
tinct that it is impossible to mistake it. We 



AND CHB1STIAN UNION. 41 



find through the whole of history one li- 
turgical type preyailing under a vast num- 
ber of modifications. In different parts of 
the Christian world we find Liturgies pecu- 
liar to each locality, but all adhering with 
fidelity to the universal type, and there- 
fore all constituting only different and slight- 
ly yaried forms of the one Christian Lit- 
urgy. The existence of four great Liturgies 
in early times, bearing the names respectively 
of St. Peter, St. James, St. Mark, and St. 
John, closely resembling each other, indicates 
one primitive liturgical type from which 
they sprang. The successive developments of 
Christian doctrine left their impress upon the 
Liturgy in these principal, or in other minor 
forms. The Liturgy of St. John, received 
originally in the British Isles, was modified by 
the then pure Liturgy of the Western Church. 
At last, but only a few hundred years before 
the Eeformation, the primitive liturgical form 
was corrupted. The great work of the Eefor- 
mation in England, after opening the Scriptures 
to the common people, was to restore the prim- 
itive type of the Christian Liturgy. We have, 



42 



THE LITURGY 



therefore, in the Liturgy which our Church 
uses to-day, essentially the type and form of 
the universal Liturgy, springing, like a majes- 
tic tree, from Apostolic soil, and widening the 
vast sweep of its branches over the Christian 
world. 

Such being the origin and growth of the 
Liturgy, it is easy to see what elements of uni- 
versality have entered into it, as it has come 
down through the ages. While the original 
type has been faithfully preserved, each great 
epoch in the Church has touched the Liturgy 
with a living power, blotting out details of 
light or shade not in harmony with the whole, 
and adding new and still more attractive hues. 
We have glanced already at the bare external 
facts of its history, so as to catch some idea of 
the law and method of its growth. But we 
shall have a deeper impression of its universal 
character, if we see to what formative influ- 
ences it has been subjected, and how wonder- 
fully it has come in contact with and been 
moulded by the vast experience and develop- 
ment of the Christian Church. We first find 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION 



43 



it a pure and sweet fountain, springing up 
from apostolic depths, like 

44 Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God." 

As it flows on through the generations, like 
the river of Eden, it is divided " into four 
heads." One, reflecting the gorgeous hues of 
the East, bears the name of the martyr Bishop 
and Saint of Jerusalem. Another, warmed 
by the suns and glowing sands of Africa, and 
by its genial heat alone keeping the life-blood 
in cold and decrepit Churches, has come down 
to us with the character and traditions of the 
second evangelist. The third, a grand, impet- 
uous stream, like the great apostle whose name 
it bears, is destined to flow down through the 
Eoman civilization, and bathe the shores of 
Latin Christendom through all their vast ex- 
tent. The last, rising in the East, peaceful 
and serene, like the gentle disciple whom Jesus 
loved, flows to the distant West. From 
thence, with the consecration of the martyr- 
blood of Gaul, it finds its tranquil way to the 
British Isles, and mingling at last with the 



44 



THE LITURGY 



swelling tide which comes pouring down 
through the Latin Church, in one broad stream, 
bearing upon its bosom the riches of all the 
generations through which it has flowed, it 
sweeps majestically on through the present age 
to the vast millennial sea. 

In the process of development through which 
the Liturgy has passed, it has been enriched by 
the spoils of each great victory which the 
Church has gained over the hosts of error. 
The conflict with the Arian heresy gave to the 
Liturgy the Nicene Creed, and the creed which 
bears the great name of Athanasius. The 
mighty warfare carried on by Augustine against 
Pelagius brought out from the treasury of the 
Scriptures many a truth as to the corruption 
and helplessness of our nature, which has 
found its way into the Liturgy, in the form of 
supplication or praise. The victories of 
Anselm, in rescuing from the grasp of error 
and bestowing upon the Church a full and 
compact doctrine of the Atonement, can be 
traced in subsequent additions and omissions, 
recognizing the sole merit of Christ ; and in 
the terrible contest with Home, in the sixteenth 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION 



45 



century, the martyr- fires consumed the base 
alloy which the last few hundred years had add- 
ed, and left the pure gold of primitive and 
Apostolic truth. 

The product of such an origin and such a 
growth, enriched through its whole develop- 
ment by such elements of universality, must 
have broad and deep relations to human na- 
ture ; and this leads us to the consideration of 
the second point. 

II. The universality of the Liturgy in its re- 
lations to human nature. 

It grows out of the very fact of the univer- 
sality of its origin and growth that the Liturgy 
should be in harmony with the universal ele- 
ments, experiences and wants of our nature. 
Whatever has been merely temporary and acci- 
dental in the history of the Christian Church, 
if it has embodied itself at all in the Liturgy, 
has, by the peculiar process to which the Lit- 
urgy has been subjected, been finally thrown 
off, and only those features which are of uni- 
versal interest and application have remained. 
For it is evident that only that which found an 
echo in the heart of generation after generation 



46 



THE LITURGY 



would be introduced, or, if introduced, retain 
its place. The Liturgy is accordingly the em- 
bodiment of the Christian instinct of worship. 
If through all those ages in which the Liturgy 
has been used, beginning with Apostolic times, 
and reaching down through the period of the 
Eeformation to our own day, there has been a 
realization of the spiritual wants of man, a true 
idea of the great facts of redemption, then in 
the Liturgy we necessarily have the recognition 
of those wants and the presentation of those re- 
demptive facts. And it can hardly be supposed 
that in all that vast period, and amid such rich 
and varied influences, there is a single spiritual 
want which has not found expression, or a sin- 
gle fact of the great plan of redemption which 
has not been set forth in all its saving power. 
It is to be remembered that we have had all 
this time two constant factors. Human nature 
has been the same, and the plan of redemption 
has been the same, revealed as fully, in all its 
facts, at first as now. Worship, which is the 
utterance of human nature under the in- 
fluence of these facts, must, in the course of 
time, utter every possible experience of the 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION 



47 



soul, as moved by every conceivable aspect of 
the revelation of God. Jj"ow, these utterances 
of worship have been registered in the Liturgy, 
and all our profound experiences, the most del- 
icate touches of feeling, the loftiest aspirations 
of the spirit, have been crystallized, so to speak, 
in a permanent and symmetrical form. 

But there is more than this in its universal 
harmony with and adaptation to human na- 
ture. If we analyze our mental and moral 
being, we shall find how wonderfully the Lit- 
urgy stands related to that being in all the 
principal aspects in which it can be regarded. 

Take first the intellect. It is not too 
much to claim that the Liturgy has the great 
characteristics of a work of genius, embodying 
the highest powers and adapted to satisfy the 
largest requirements of the intellect. It is not 
necessary that a work of genius should be the 
product of one mind. Indeed, the grandest re- 
sults of genius are the products of the universal 
mind of the race. The British Constitution is 
thus one of the most amazmg works of genius, 
and yet it is the product of the whole English 
mind. Neither is it necessary that the produc- 



48 



THE LITURGY 



tion of a work of genius should be a conscious 
operation contemplating the final result. It 
has been said of the great architects who, from 
generation to generation, built up the mighty 
cathedrals of Europe, working under the inspi- 
ration of an instinct higher than themselves, 
" They builded wiser than they knew." And 
so this work of the ages is the unconscious pro- 
duct of the instinct of the Church, and has the 
fullest characteristic of a work of genius. For 
what is it that we find in a work of genius ? 
Its chief characteristic is that it is organic — a 
creation — the expression of some central idea 
working itself out in every minutest part. 
Every portion of such a work must be vitally 
related to every other portion, and there must 
be a unity in and through them all. It is also 
true of the highest products of genius, that the 
great archetypal idea is repeated constantly in 
higher and higher forms, just as the same type 
runs on through all the processes of creation, 
but becoming more beautiful and wonderful at 
each successive stage. Let us look at the Lit- 
urgy and see if it has these characteristics. We 
have evidently a great central idea as the vitaliz 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 



49 



ing principle of the whole — the idea of wor- 
ship. But in the comprehensive idea of wor- 
ship is included the expression of all the re- 
ligious emotions, and the recognition of those 
truths by which the emotions are excited and 
sustained. Penitence, faith, thanksgiving, 
praise, adoration, supplication, intercession, 
sacrifice, all enter into the idea of worship, and 
all must be pervaded by the great truths of the 
Gospel, so that what might be otherwise mere 
transient emotion may be transformed into per- 
manent principle by the influence of the truth. 
In the Liturgy this central idea, in one or the 
other of its aspects, like a system of nerves and 
muscles, pervades the whole structure, and 
binds in vital union each part to all. See, for 
a moment, with what symmetry this formative 
idea disposes the various portions of the service 
of prayer and praise ; how logically it unfolds 
itself from step to step ; how orderly is its de- 
velopment, and how the all-pervading law pen- 
etrates to every minutest detail. The worship- 
per is first brought into that attitude in which 
every true worshipper must stand — a realiza- 
tion of his filial relation to God through peni- 



50 



THE LITURGY 



tence and forgiveness. The confession and de- 
claration of absolution are followed by the 
"Our Father." The first impulse of the 
heart in this recognized relation is praise, and 
the Liturgy, reflecting this fact in our nature, 
embodies in the Venite the call to praise. But 
the soul, not yet so strong as to soar upon its 
own wings of adoration, must be borne up for 
a while, and so it is lifted upon the eagle wings 
of the Psalms. Then it is prepared for flights 
of its own, by instruction from the Scriptures, 
first from the Old Testament, looking forward 
in spirit and prophecy to the New. And lest 
the subordination of instruction to worship 
should fail to be expressed, between the Old 
and the N~ew we have a glorious burst of praise 
in the Te Deum, binding together, in idea, the 
two Covenants, and suggesting the harmony be- 
tween them. After the N~ew Testament, praise 
is again the instinct of the renewed nature. Then 
what we have received at any and all times as 
instruction, is summed up in a statement of 
our belief ; and now, through all these exer- 
cises, if they have been rightly used, the soul 
is ready for supplication and intercession. But 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 



51 



this, by a law of our nature, grows more in- 
tense, and the corresponding idea in the service 
changes the form into that of the Litany, with 
short and passionate exclamations, the repeated 
petitions of the people in the same words. 

But the central idea unfolds itself in new 
forms, taking all the elements which have pre- 
ceded up into a higher sphere in the Com- 
munion, which is the culminating act of Chris- 
tian worship. We stand here, too, upon pro- 
founder theological truth. The law of God, in 
all its yast requirements, fitly precedes the set- 
ting forth of the Saviour as a sacrifice for the 
sins of the whole world. The Gospel and Epis- 
tle lead us into the very arcana of revelation, 
and amid the lowliest expressions of penitence, 
the most joyful assurances of forgiveness, and 
the loftiest ascriptions of praise, we renew the 
scene of the Last Supper, and worship ends 
in the spiritual offering and sacrifice of our- 
selves, and in the symbolism of our incorpora- 
tion into Christ. 

Thus analyzed, the Liturgy reveals the great 
characteristics of a work of the highest genius, 
and the correspondence between it and the laws 



52 



THE LITURGY 



of the human mind must enable it to satisfy the 
permanent and universal demands of the in- 
tellect. 

Much that has already been said serves to 
show its relation to the emotional part of our 
nature. But it may be well for us to see still 
further how the Liturgy is adapted to excite 
the emotioxs, and how the emotions find their 
most fitting expressions in its accents of prayer 
and praise. The law of our nature is that the 
emotions are excited by the presentation of ob- 
jects which are so constituted as to move our 
hope or fear, our hatred or love. It is a re- 
markable fact, too, that the best and holiest 
emotions are excited gradually. They are not 
to be called into exercise by violent methods, 
and the process by which sympathetic responses 
of love and devotion are secured must be one 
in which the grounds of these emotions slowly 
unfold themselves. The Liturgy, growing as 
it has out of the instinct of the Church, con- 
forms to this psychological law. There are at 
first no passionate appeals, nothing intense in 
the expressions of devotion. All is calm and 
tranquil, adapted to an unemotional condition 



AND CHBISTIAN UNION. 



53 



of the mind. But ere long truths and facts be- 
gin to come up to view, which let in a gleam of 
light and heat upon the emotional nature. 
When the mind has been thoroughly penetrated 
with scriptural truth, and has summed up, in 
audible utterance, the facts of redemption, then 
the emotional nature has become excited, and 
now the strongest expressions lose all exaggera- 
tion and become the natural utterances of the 
soul. We prostrate ourselves before the throne 
of God, and beg for mercy as miserable sinners. 
Electric sympathies bind us to other hearts ; 
their joys and sorrows become ours, In our 
moments of deepest penitence, and the raptures 
of our highest devotion, none are forgotten. 
We intercede for rulers in Church and State, for 
travellers by land or sea. In this ardor of our 
love, which has thus been kindled at the altar 
of devotion, we have forgiven, and we pray 
even for our enemies, persecutors, and slan- 
derers. And then our sympathizing thoughts 
turn to those who are in trouble and sorrow. 
The weary, heart-sick prisoner and captive ; 
the widow and fatherless children we commend 
to the defence and protection of the Lord. 



54 



THE LITURGY 



But all these emotions, thus stirred and exer- 
cised, are without satisfaction and peace, ex- 
cept as the glorious presence of the Saviour 
moves before the mind and they can rest upon 
him. And then relief is found for feelings, 
which have no other fitting object, in those 
passionate exclamations in which all our hopes 
are staked upon his sacrifice : " By thine agony 
and bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, by 
thy death and burial, by thy glorious resurrec- 
tion and ascension, good Lord deliver us." 

It is wonderful to notice, in the Communion 
Office, the correspondence to this law of our 
emotional nature. Our emotions are now sup- 
posed to be in the liveliest exercise. We gather 
in sweet, affectionate intercourse around the 
table of our Lord. What deep and ardent ex- 
pressions of humility and love now, in all the 
truthfulness of nature, tremble upon our lips ! 
We bewail our sins and wickedness ; the re- 
membrance of them is grievous unto us, the 
burden of them is intolerable. The precious- 
ness of the blood-shedding of Christ, and the 
innumerable benefits of his passion, are again 
and again suggested to the mind. His exceed- 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION, 



55 



ing great love, his blessed passion and precious 
death, echo the feelings of our hearts, and we 
lose all thought of figure and symbol in the 
reality, to our aroused emotions, of the recep- 
tion of his precious body and blood. 

It is this characteristic of the Liturgy that 
makes it an object of affection to those by whom 
it is used. These emotions become intertwined 
with it, they hang upon it, like rich clusters of 
grapes upon the trellis which supports them, 
bound to it by the ties of association, and 
ripening upon it to their full perfection. This 
cannot be the case unless there is a fixed and 
permanent form around which the affections 
can cluster. We can never know how vastly 
our emotional nature is indebted to it as an ob- 
ject of our affections. It has entered, year 
after year, with its exhaustless wealth into our 
spiritual being ; and as the sweet birds, caught 
from the wild wood, make melody for us in our 
homes, so these winged words have been im- 
prisoned in the mysterious chambers of mem- 
ory, and by day and by night make sacred 
music to the soul. 

A work so universal as this cannot leave un- 



56 



THE LITURGY 



touched the remaining aspect in which our na- 
ture may be regarded. It must have its har- 
monious relations with and adaptations to the 
will. The emotions lie but just behind the 
will, and that which so profoundly stirs the 
emotions cannot but lay its hand upon the vol- 
untary faculties of the mind. A great subject 
is thus opened to ns, though we can only allude 
to it — the Liturgy as a discipline in individual 
and national life. Its power in the formation 
of character is one of the points in which its 
vast universality is most clearly to be seen. 

The method of this influence is analogous to 
what we find in all the great forces of nature. 
The usual operation of the laws of nature is by 
incessant pressure of influence. Gravitation is 
a constant force— acting at all times — its 
agency felt no more sensibly at one time than 
another, and yet it is a power which holds the 
universe together. The vast iceberg which is 
swept down by ocean currents into summer 
seas, is not smitten and shattered by the light- 
ning's stroke, but, under the constant influence 
of the sun, the huge mass melts silently away. 
This is the method of the influence of the Lit- 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 



57 



urgy upon the will. It subjects it constantly 
to repetitions of the same pressure. It urges 
the will toward duty and holiness by gentle 
but incessant constraint. It puts men in a 
position where they must be either hypocritical 
or sincere worshippers, and obliges them to 
make the choice. 

As this law is best illustrated by instances of 
its operation, it may not be inappropriate to 
refer to some touching evidences, in the life of 
the great Dr. Johnson, of the influence of the 
solemnities of the Church upon his religious 
life. On Good Friday, 1764, after those ser- 
vices which set before us the very scene of the 
mysterious sacrifice of the cross, deeply moved 
to self-examination and amendment of life, he 
writes in his journal : " I have made no ref- 
ormation ; I have lived totally useless, and 
more sensual in thought. This is not the life 
to which heaven is promised." And he adds 
his earnest purpose to lead a different life. 
On Easter Day, under the influences of the glo- 
rious events commemorated in this festival, his 
will is powerfully moved by the thrilling ser- 
vice in which he has engaged. " I prayed," he 



» 



58 



TEE LITURGY 



says, "for resolution and perseverance to 
amend my life. God, grant me to resolve 
aright and keep my resolutions, for Jesus 
Christ's sake." 

III. The point to which I would finally ask 
your attention, and to which I shall very briefly 
refer, is the universality of the Liturgy in rela- 
tion to diversities of religious opinion. The 
theory upon which the Liturgy is constructed 
is the embodying in it of all essential and fun- 
damental truth, and the exclusion of that 
which is mere matter of individual opinion. 
If it is necessary to recognize in public worship 
the peculiar views which, as a part of the Chris- 
tian family, we hold, then the universality of 
the Liturgy, in this respect, would be an objec- 
tion rather than a benefit ; but in that case sec- 
tarianism, or separation upon points not essen- 
tial, must be regarded as the right and normal 
condition of the Church. And since there are 
few who will admit this, we must conclude that 
diversities of religious opinion, outside of that 
which is deemed absolutely fundamental, ought 
not to interfere with unity of worship. But if 
this is the case, we must have a form of wor- 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 59 

ship from which these individual peculiarities 
are excluded, and which yet embodies the great 
truths recognized by the Universal Church. 
Xow, the Liturgy meets just these requisitions. 
I do not see how any one of the evangelical 
Churches, holding the fundamental truths of 
the Gospel as contained in the universal creeds, 
could find any difficulty, so far as principle is 
concerned, in its use. But to bring the matter 
directly to a test. The Baptist would find, in 
this service of worship, nothing that would 
contravene his peculiar views. He might still 
retain his own opinions as to the mode and the 
subjects of baptism, and yet use every word of 
the Liturgy appointed for public worship. 
The Presbyterian, the Congregationalist, the 
Dutch Eeformed, may hold what views they 
please as to the Calvinistic system, or methods 
of Church goverment and organization. The 
Liturgy stands grandly aloof from such ques- 
tions, and no word which it contains need dis- 
turb the most earnest advocate of these partic- 
ular theological views. Or, take the Metho- 
dist, his Arminianism will not be rudely 
shocked by any accent here of supplication or 



60 



THE LITURGY 



praise. And yet, all these find here that which 
they all acknowledge to be the sum and sub- 
stance of fundamental Christian truth. The 
very process of the growth of the Liturgy has 
insured this, for everything local, transient, 
and individual has been eliminated, and that 
only which has the sanction of the Universal 
Church has been retained. 

Xow, it may be said that our proposal of the 
Liturgy as a basis for Christian union is a sec- 
tarian position on our part, and that it is sim- 
ply asking all men to agree with us. Well, we 
must stand somewhere, and labor for Christian 
union from some given point. If the mere 
fact that we stand somewhere is sectarianism, 
then we are justly liable to the charge. But 
does our position involve anything sectarian ? 
We ask for unity in worship, and our very po- 
sition is that of the abandonment of everything 
individual and transient for the permanent and 
universal. We ask that all but fundamental 
truth, universally acknowledged to be such, 
in worship should be given up ; and then 
the question will be as to universality and 
general adaptation and adoption between the 



AND CHB1STIAN UNION 



61 



forms of prayer in the Liturgy, and the forms of 
prayer which are furnished for congregations in 
extemporaneous worship. There can be little 
doubt, it seems to us, that if there ever is a re- 
alization of unity in worship, it will be on a 
liturgical basis and after the model of a his- 
toric Liturgy. 

We have thus considered the Universality of 
the Liturgy : 

I. In its origin and the process of its growth. 

II. In its harmony with and adaptation to hu- 
man nature. 

III. In the possibility of its use among all di- 
versities of religious opinion, where fun- 
damental truth is held. 

There are many indications of a tendency, 
throughout the Christian world, to visible unity 
and a common liturgical worship. The great 
difficulty with which this tendency has to con- 
tend is the conviction that Christian union is 
not possible, or, if possible, not desirable. 
But this shows a strange blindness to the de- 
signs of God in his government of the Church, 



62 



THE LITURGY 



and a strange indifference to the beauty of that 
harmony and concord which called forth from 
the Psalmist the exclamation : " Behold how 
good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to 
dwell together in unity/' This blindness to 
the certain signs of the times is as if one should 
stand in the presence of the morning, as one 
flush of golden light after another shoots up 
the eastern sky, and yet declare that it heralds 
no coming day. This want of appreciation of 
the beauty and blessedness of Christian union 
is as if one should be surrounded by a chaos of 
grand and lovely objects, and yet desire no all- 
powerful hand to reduce them into the order 
and harmony of one magnificent whole. We 
love diversity of sounds, the infinitely varied 
accents of Christian experience, the multitudi- 
nous offering up of prayer and praise. But we 
would have them all, the pealing tones or the 
softest melody, the plaintive supplication or the 
exultant shoutings of triumph, swell forth from 
one grand instrument, vast as Christianity it- 
self, and touched by the infinite skill of the 
great Master's hand. 

Upon all those to whom the Christian Lit- 



AND CHRISTIAN UNION 



63 



urgy has come down through the ages, a most 
solemn responsibility is imposed. They possess 
that which is the type of a universal worship. 
Let them see to it that they send it broadcast 
with the everlasting Word of God over the 
world. And let the longing for Christian union 
and common worship blend with our desires 
and aspirations for a higher and better life, even 
as we pray that we may follow the blessed saints 
in all virtuous and godly living, on the very 
ground that God has " knit together his elect 
in one communion and fellowship, in the mys- 
tical body of His Son Christ our Lord." 



THE CHURCH'S 
LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 



Preached before the Convektioit of the 
Diocese of New York, Sept. 25, 1872. 

It cannot be regarded otherwise than as a 
privilege to stand in this place upon this occa- 
sion. But it is a privilege which is attended 
with a very special and delicate responsibility. 
The preacher, in such a case, is accepted for 
the time, by his brethren, as their teacher, and 
as their teacher, too, upon a class of subjects 
specially appropriate to such occasions — those 
which relate to the Church of which we are 
ministers and representatives. It is the diversity 
of opinion which exists in regard to this class 
of subjects that invests the position of the 
preacher, on such an occasion, with the re- 
sponsibility of which I have spoken. No true 



66 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



man would be willing, or could be reasonably 
expected, to speak otherwise than in the line of 
his positive convictions. While endeavoring 
conscientiously to do this, I recall that beauti- 
ful passage, in one of the letters of Ignatius, in 
which he speaks of himself as a u man given to 
unity." It is my earnest desire, in what I may 
have to say, both by fidelity to my own convic- 
tions and justice to those of others, to pro- 
mote " the unity of the spirit in the bond of 
peace. " 

The portion of the Holy Scriptures which 
suggests the special subject upon which I would 
address you is found inEph. 3 : 14, 15 : " The 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the 
whole family in heaven and earth is named." 

Every one, who reflects upon the subject, 
must be impressed with the design, which is 
manifested in the svs e u of things in which we 
:ire placed, that men should be organized into 
societies. To say nothing now of the social in- 
stincts and tendencies, under the influence of 
which men come into every variety of mutual 
relations, there are certain societies which exist 
by express divine provision, and are broadly 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



67 



distinguishable from all others in the relation 
which they sustain to mankind. The first of 
these divine institutions, lying as it does at the 
very foundation of society, in the broadest sense 
of the term, is the Family. The next, in which 
man enters into a sphere of higher and freer 
discipline, is the State. The last and highest 
of the divinely-established societies, in which 
man enters on the life eternal, is the Church. 

It is impossible rightly to understand any 
one of these societies without having seized 
upon the great principles by which the charac- 
ter of the others is determined. They are all 
linked together by the common ideas which 
pervade them, and are different aspects of one 
great plan for the moral welfare and redemp- 
tion of mankind. It is wonderful to notice 
how, in the successive development of these so- 
cieties, some fundamental idea is lifted up into 
higher relations and a new significance. Take, 
for instance, the idea of fatherhood. It exists 
in its simplest form in the Family. It is car- 
ried up, with more complex relations, through 
the patriarchate and the tribe, into the State. 
It reaches its highest form and development in 



08 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



the Church, where the reverence, the loyalty, 
and the love in which we have been disciplined 
in the lower relations are lifted up to the 
" Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom 
the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named. " 

In this connection we shall notice the re- 
markable significance of one of the terms which 
the apostle here uses, and which in our version 
is translated " family." Adopting, for our 
present purpose, the view of those biblical crit- 
ics who consider the word " family" hereto re- 
fer to the whole body of the redeemed, our at- 
tention is at once arrested by the peculiarity of 
the word in the original. It is, as you remem- 
ber, Uarpm, and suggests instantly to the 
mind the relationship which exists between this 
and the other divine societies in the world. It 
is clearly intimated in this word that the 
Church is not merely a society, that it is not 
merely a divine society, but that it is also a so- 
ciety based, in the highest sense, upon that 
fatherly and filial relation which has its lower 
expression in the Family and the State, but 
which here reaches its highest form in the 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



G9 



fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men 
in Christ Jesus. 

And while there is this same fundamental 
idea running through these divine institutions, 
and assuming a higher character at each stage 
of its development, there is also a progress in 
the universality of the sphere in which this fun- 
damental idea is manifested. The Family is 
limited in its sphere by the necessary operation 
of natural laws. The State has a wider field, 
but it too is confined within the limits of na- 
tional development, determined usually by the 
form and extent of areas bounded by moun- 
tains, or rivers, or seas. The tendency toward 
universality, which is thus evident, reaches its 
fullest manifestation in the Church, which is 
the one only universal society, ever struggling 
toward the realization of that ideal which in- 
cludes the whole race of man. 

This idea of a universal society, established 
in truth and righteousness, has always haunted 
the imagination of the profoundest thinkers 
and noblest spirits of the world. Plato unfolds 
his conception of it in those wonderful antici- 
pations of the progress of human thought 



70 



m HE CHURCH'S LAW 



through more than two thousand years, and in 
those magnificent word-pictures of man and so- 
ciety which we find in the " Kepublic." 
Dante, whose marvellous genius had gathered 
up all the treasures of knowledge which human 
inquiry had accumulated, made his " Divina 
Commedia" an embodiment of the laws and 
principles, as he conceived them, of this divine 
society. St. Augustine soared higher than 
Plato or Dante in his vision of the 4 ' City of 
God." And with what wonder and awe do we 
follow the prophetic history of this society in 
the Apocalypse ; trace its bitter trials through 
centuries of persecution and sacrifice ; mark 
its triumphs ; and see it, at last, the new Jeru- 
salem, the eternal kingdom of heaven ! 

If we wish to catch the significance of this 
divine society, and to understand somewhat of 
its fundamental principles and laws, we have 
the starting-point in the idea of it presented in 
the text. It is a Family. It is also a State. 
The fatherhood upon which it is based is the 
fatherhood of God. Its brotherhood is the 
brotherhood of man in Christ. Its ideal is as 
universal as the race. 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



71 



Starting, then, from this point, we find that 
there are two prominent ideas in each of these 
lower institutions, the Family and the State, 
which we should expect to find reappearing in 
an intenser form in the Church. These two 
ideas are those of stability and progress. While 
the institution of the Family is subject to a law 
of development, it is principally characterized 
by conservative elements. The principles upon 
which it is based, and the phenomena it pre- 
sents, are substantially the same, age after age. 
The State has also its conservative elements, 
but is chiefly characterized by mobility and 
progress. If, then, the relations of these three 
divine societies are such as we have supposed, 
we shall find this twofold character in the 
Church. There will be elements of stability 
and elements of change and development. 
Both classes of elements will exist in an in- 
tenser form than before ; but the elements of 
change and development having already as- 
serted, in the State, their superiority in power, 
will have an ascendency in a still higher de- 
gree in the Church. It is this law of devel- 
opment, passing up from these lower societies 



72 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



into the Church, that we are now to con- 
sider. 

Think for a moment how wonderful is this 
fact of development in these lower societies ! 
How does family life everywhere expand itself 
into the life of states ! And these states, how 
vastly varied are the forms they assume and the 
vicissitudes through which they pass ! The 
generations in them struggle, sometimes blindly, 
scarcely ever with more than imperfect con- 
sciousness, toward some higher and divinely ap- 
pointed end. The progress of states, though 
strangely devious, yet when the whole of his- 
tory is considered, is seen to have been, by the 
operation of some mysterious and irresistible 
law, toward wider knowledge of truth, more 
substantial victories over evil, and increase of 
the welfare and the happiness of mankind. 

It would seem certain, then, that a similar 
law of development would be found to exist in 
the Church. But what is its nature, and what 
are our relations to it, are questions most im- 
portant for us to consider. 

This development must be conceived of as a 
development of the Church as such, and not 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



73 



merely of the individuals of which it is com- 
posed. Each generation, therefore, has a van- 
tage ground which it inherits from the experi- 
ence and discoveries of preceding generations ; 
so that, although this inheritance is not always 
wisely used, and consequently particular gen- 
erations in the Church's history may fail to 
advance beyond the point reached by those who 
preceded them, yet the accelerated rate of prog- 
ress, after such stationary periods, is a suffi- 
cient compensation, and vindicates the opera- 
tion of the law. 

This progress in the Church is, like the anal- 
ogous progress in civil society, chiefly an intel- 
lectual rather than a moral progress ; that is, a 
progress in the discovery and apprehension of 
truth rather than in spiritual life. The his- 
tory of the Church discloses an ever-widening 
range of truth, into the possession of which the 
Church enters. It discloses also a progress in 
the adaptation of the Church's method to the 
new and more complex needs of advancing gen- 
erations. But it seems clear that there is not 
a corresponding progress, or higher attainments, 
in the same ratio, in the Christian life. This 



74 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



fact limits, for our consideration, the sphere 
of the Church's development to the clearer ap- 
prehension of truth, and to the ever-varying 
adaptation of its means and agencies to the 
ever-varying needs of the world. 

This twofold progress is brought about, on 
the supernatural side, by the enlightening in- 
fluences of the Holy Spirit ; and, on the natu- 
ral side, by the operation of an intellect pre- 
pared, by a sanctified heart, for the investiga- 
tion and practical use of truth. The material 
upon which this investigation is to be employed 
is already furnished. There is no addition to or 
development of that. There is no new revela- 
tion of facts upon which Christianity is based. 
Just as nature is a finished and complete sys- 
tem, so revelation is also. It is a clearer 
knowledge of the system which we need, and in 
which progress is made. It is to be remem- 
bered, also, that this development in the Church 
runs parallel with, and is largely conditioned 
by, secular and scientific progress. The two 
are so intimately connected in the great system 
of which they form a part that their disloca- 
tion is impossible. 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



?5 



Having thus considered some of the laws and 
principles of this development, we are prepared 
to notice some of the salient and most charac- 
teristic points in its history. It is not uniform 
movement which presents itself for our consid- 
eration, but alternations of rest and extraordi- 
nary activity. It was after a long period, ap- 
parently of intellectual repose, that the Church 
found itself, in the Nicene age, in the posses- 
sion of a new consciousness of truth which 
had been but dimly apprehended before. The 
Middle Ages, the influence of which upon the 
Church has been so often both overrated and 
undervalued, gave to the world St. Anselm's 
profound theory of the Atonement and its rela- 
tion to the divine government. A still vaster 
stride in this wonderful development was tak- 
en at the great Keformation, when seeds of 
thought sown long before were springing up 
in abundant harvests — when the world was all 
alive with the new intellectual activity which 
had been excited. A thousand fetters, by which 
the human spirit had been bound, were bro- 
ken ; a thousand new impulses toward freedom 
and a higher and better life had been given. 



76 



THE CHURCH'S LA \Y 



But, among all the marvellous achievements of 
that period, none is more conspicuous than the 
new view which the Church then gained of the 
work of Christ. It awoke to a full conscious- 
ness of his divinity and his relation to the God- 
head in the Nicene period. It rose to a truer 
apprehension of the nature of atonement in the 
time of the Schoolmen. At the Reformation it 
laid hold with a grasp which no power can un- 
loose upon the fact of the finished work and 
the free salvation accomplished by Christ. In 
the thrilling joy of this clear apprehension of 
truth, this consciousness of vast development 
and entrance upon a new career, that portion 
of the Church Universal to which w r e belong, 
our Church, and to which our allegiance is due, 
gave herself a new name, inscribed it deep down 
upon the very foundations on which she stands, 
and calls herself, in commemoration of the vic- 
tories of that period, Protestant, henceforth 
and forever ! 

Before considering what circumstances are 
favorable to this general development, we must 
not be unmindful of the fact that we are living 
now in the midst of a development more won- 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



77 



derful than any of the previous ages. The 
great idea of the theology of the present day is 
that of the love of God. This love, in all its 
ineffable exhibitions to the Family, the Patriot, 
of which God is the Father, becomes the inspir- 
ing motive to the love of the brotherhood in 
Christ Jesus. It is this mighty truth, appre- 
hended as never before, by the moral sense 
rather than the logical faculty, which is now 
stirring beneath the phenomena of this new 
democratic age in which we live. It is the an- 
imating principle in all those efforts which are 
now made for the welfare and redemption of 
man. It has taught the lesson of the priceless 
value of every member of the race. It has made 
every burden which lies on any child of Adam 
a burden on the Christian's heart. Under the 
inspiration of this principle, the Church goes 
out among dark and desolate places, sighs and 
groans in sympathy with human woe, and 
stretches out her pitying hands to rescue and to 
save. Perhaps this is the final period of its de- 
velopment. Could there be a more glorious 
consummation, if this ideal should be realized ! 



78 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



"The world is old : 
But the old world waits the time to be renewed. 
Toward which new hearts, in individual growth, 
Must quicken and increase to multitude, 
In new dynasties of the race of men ; 
Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously 
New Churches, new economies, new laws 
Admitting freedom, new societies 
Excluding falsehood. He shall make all new. ' ' 

After these considerations, the inquiry sug- 
gests itself, What circumstances are most favor- 
able to this development ? It has been found, 
throughout the whole history of the State and 
the Church, that one condition of progress and 
development is always present, and that is the 
conflict of different parties and schools of 
opinion. Nothing could be sadder than the ac- 
counts w T hich have come down to us of the bit- 
terness of partisan warfare in the Church, 
through which, nevertheless, the purification of 
the Church has again and again been accom- 
plished. These are the abuses of that which is 
a necessary and beneficent feature in human so- 
ciety. It is a curious fact that there are such 
limits placed, in human nature, to individual 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



79 



diversities of opinion that we seldom find men 
standing alone in such matters, isolated from 
their fellows. As an almost universal rule, we 
find men of a certain temperament and certain 
types of education grouped together in parties 
and schools, and held together by a common in- 
terest in what they hold to be important prin- 
ciples or ideas. Such groups or parties we find 
in the New Testament period of the Church. 
They have characterized it at every period of 
its history. Some of these parties have served 
a certain purpose for a time, and then disap- 
peared. Some have rooted themselves so deeply 
in the Church's life that they have been per- 
manent elements in it for centuries ; and there 
are others which seem, in one form or another, 
to run through, the whole history of the Church. 
There has been abundant occasion, all through 
this history, to mourn over exhibitions of party 
spirit and partisan aggrandizement ; but no 
man, it seems to me, can deny the beneficent 
influence which parties, as such, have exercised, 
and the impossibility of any true progress in 
the Church without them. See, for a moment, 
the method by which different schools, if ani- 



so 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



mated by high and generous feeling, will pro- 
mote the discovery and establishment of truth. 
Since more or less of error will creep into all 
systems, the mistaken positions which will be 
found in all ecclesiastical parties will be ex- 
posed, and more or less qualified, by the rigid 
scrutiny of opposite parties, to which they will 
be subjected. The very fact of opposition will 
incite to more thorough examination of the 
ground assumed : and, though it sometimes 
leads to an obstinate adherence to that which 
has once been received as true, it more generally 
leads to an abandonment, sooner or later, of 
that which is found to be false. In our present 
state, in which we know but in part, our great 
need is to know more. Inquiry, restless, per- 
sistent inquiry, insatiable searching after truth, 
is an imperative necessity of the Church, until 
we shall know even as also we are known. But 
from the very moment when our searching be- 
gins, we shall be thrown upon different tracks ; 
and, while the number of those paths is limited 
by the laws of the mind, so that we travel in 
company upon them, yet they apparently di- 
verge more and more, and some seem to run in 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



81 



opposite directions ; but a mysterious attrac- 
tion seems to keep the different groups within 
sight and hailing distance of each other, and it 
is found at last that the complex movement of 
the whole has been, with greater or less varia- 
tions, toward a common end. It is thus that 
God in his wisdom makes the errors of one class 
of men correct the errors of another, thus caus- 
ing the very follies of men to praise him in the 
discovery of his truth. 

It would seem to be necessary, therefore, if a 
man would aid in this development and prog- 
ress of the Church, that he should submit to 
the conditions under which alone, in the pres- 
ent state of things, it is to be secured, and suffer 
himself to be drawn, by his convictions and 
sympathies, into affiliation with that school 
which most nearly expresses his own views or 
seems to him to promise best in its influence for 
the prosperity of the Church. If the issues upon 
which the Church is more or less divided are 
not important, then it follows that the chief 
energies of the Church are expended upon 
trifling questions, a humiliating concession 
which none of us, happily, feels compelled to 



82 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



make. But if these issues are important, then 
it would seem as if he must be wanting in clear- 
ness of vision who confuses these lines of dis- 
tinction ; or, if clearly discerning them, must 
be wanting in masculine vigor and earnest con- 
scientiousness, if he fail to show himself unmis- 
takably upon the one side or the other. I was 
very much struck, not long since, with a pass- 
age, characterized by rare wisdom, in a letter 
from the distinguished Dr. Nott, formerly 
President of Union College, to the late Bishop 
of Pennsylvania. He says : " Where there are 
party lines drawn in a Church, and especially 
where these lines are understood to be the 
boundary lines of great principles, no man hold- 
ing an important station can maintain a per- 
fect state of neutrality, nor can he assume to 
do it, without eventually losing the respect of 
both parties and of the community itself ; for 
it is natural to respect men diflEering from us in 
principles, more than men who are understood 
to have no principles at all. " Carrying out the 
idea of this admirable passage, it would seem to 
me to be a happy day when the truth is gen- 
erally recognized that the Church is more cath- 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



83 



olic than any of its members can possibly be ; 
that the questions which agitate the Church are 
questions in regard to which every minister, at 
least, should have some decided convictions ; 
and as it is impossible for him to hold the 
contradictory propositions which are presented 
to him, he will do wisely and best for the 
Church to declare which he does hold, and de- 
vote himself, with generous consideration for 
others, but with earnest devotion, to the cause 
which he has thus espoused. Such a general 
recognition of the legitimacy of different schools 
of opinion in the Church, and the part which 
they play in its development, would lead to the 
abandonment of that dream of absolute uni- 
formity, the effort to secure which has been 
such a fruitful cause of alienation and division, 
and to an acceptance of that law of diversity in 
unity which so wonderfully characterizes the 
works of God. 

If, in this imperfect state of being, the de- 
velopment of the Church is thus brought about 
by the collision of opposing sentiments, in differ- 
ent schools, it becomes a very important ques- 
tion whether the relations of these schools to 



84 



THE O+iliXVH'3 LAW 



each, other may not be animated by a more 
Christian spirit, and placed upon a more satis- 
factory Christian basis, without impairing fidel- 
ity to what is regarded as Christian truth. The 
odium theologicum has been proverbial, and the 
type of the bitterest hatred and hostility, It is 
a marked feature of our age that these asperities 
are to so large a degree softened, and that, too, 
without any necessary diminution of devotion 
to truth. When Ave remember the circum- 
stances under which religious opinion is usually 
formed ; how almost inevitable it is that a cer- 
tain class of philosophical views, or the absence 
of such views, will give a certain definite direc- 
tion to religious thought ; how greatly it is 
affected by social position and companionship ; 
how dependent it is upon temperament and 
general physical condition ; when, in addition 
to all these mysterious influences, which exer- 
cise so powerful an effect upon religious 
opinion, we remember that each one of us is 
fallible, that there is no more infallibility of the 
individual than there is of the pope ; especially 
when we think of the effect of death in arrest- 
ing the animosities of theological and ecclesias- 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



85 



tical conflict, and how the kindly feelings and 
generous sympathies flow forth to a fallen op- 
ponent — may we not well ask ourselves whether 
the magnanimity which is possible after death 
may not be possible during the life of those 
whose opinions we repudiate. When we read 
of the chivalrous feelings which, in the olden 
time, animated the Christian and the Saracen 
hosts, in the hostilities of mortal strife ; the 
dignified courtesy extended to each ; the in- 
dignant refusal to take any base advantage of 
the foe, and the heroic sentiment that led the 
Florentine Christians to ring their bells before 
rushing to the attack, in order that the enemy 
might not be taken unawares, we should blush 
with shame should it be found that there is less 
of honor and magnanimity among those mem- 
bers of the family of Christ who are contending 
with each other for the truth. 

I have said that there has been a great soften- 
ing of theological and ecclesiastical asperities. 
The whole tone of controversy on these sub- 
jects is less bitter and more just. Let us be 
thankful for it, and feel that there is yet room 
for improvement. The right spirit, in its ful- 



86 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



ness, may be expected to come when, not re- 
pression but liberty, within the widest limits of 
the Church's toleration and comprehensiveness, 
is seen to be the true law of the Church's life 
and development. This result might well flow 
from the recognized fact that we are members 
of a Family, with one common Father, and ar 
brethren in Christ Jesus. 

But the difficulty here is that, in the view of 
so many, there is no way of contending valiantly 
for the faith so effectual as putting our opponents 
under ecclesiastical axes and harrows ; and, i 
we can not succeed in that, of severing all eccle- 
siastical ties by which we are bound to them. 
This is a policy which has the advantage of 
plainness and simplicity. It looks bold and 
thorough. But it is one which has in all ages 
been attended with immense loss to the Church. 
Kothing but infallibility will justify it ; and 
even the supposed possession of infallibility will 
not justify it, unless a man or the Church, can 
infallibly know that he or it is infallible. 

The argument, by which such a policy is en- 
forced, inevitably breaks down when pushed to 
its logical results. The principle of ecclesiasti- 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



87 



cal seclusion from error would lead to separation 
from everybody, for everybody differs from us 
in some point, which, if carried to its extremest 
consequences, would involve, in our view, all 
the error in the universe. The final landing- 
place of the argument is in that position in 
which a man says, " I alone am the Church ; I 
alone am a Christian !" 

I certainly shall not be understood as under- 
valuing the importance of those questions which 
agitate the Church. My whole argument is 
based upon a sense of their vast importance. 
Neither would I compromise one jot or tittle of 
principle, or of clear conviction as to the best 
methods and agencies by which the interests of 
the truth can be subserved. What I plead for 
is an unfettered development, so far as any ec- 
clesiastical repression is concerned, of historical 
tendencies in the Church ; the freest possible 
inquiry and investigation ; the most earnest, 
while fair and honorable, condemnation of what 
we believe to be error, and advocacy of what we 
believe to be truth. These are the weapons 
and the only legitimate weapons, of our warfare. 
So far as any tendencies in the Church are dan- 



88 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



gerous, and some of them I feel to be very full 
of danger, this method of meeting them seems 
to me the only one which is safe or wise. And 
this I say though certain of these tendencies, in 
my understanding of them, tremble, on the one 
side, upon the very verge of infidel rationalism, 
and on the other, of the grossest superstition 
and idolatry. But it is more than doubtful 
whether we could safely dispense with any one 
of the schools out of which even these tenden- 
cies proceed. 

Let us look for a moment at the relation of 
these schools of opinion to some of the great in- 
terests of Christianity at the present day. It is 
impossible to make any classification of them 
which shall be more than approximately cor- 
rect. But for all practical purposes, the ordi- 
nary classification of them in this Church — as 
the Broad, High, and Low or Evangelical 
schools — is sufficiently accurate. Accepting this 
classification, I would endeavor with entire 
frankness to consider some of their prominent 
characteristics. 

Among the prominent ideas in the Broad 
Church movement is the widening of the catho- 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



licity of the Church by reducing its dogmatic 
basis. The principle upon which it proceeds is 
that the fewer and more fundamental the things 
which the Church requires to be believed, the 
greater will be the number of those who will 
adhere to the Church. That this tendency may 
be, and has been, carried to such an extent as 
to threaten the sacrifice of some of the funda- 
mental articles of the faith must be admitted. 
But when we remember how, in modern times, 
the ancient creeds have been overlaid with cum- 
brous confessions and elaborate theological sys- 
tems, and what a fruitful source has thus been 
opened of controversy and division, this move- 
ment must be regarded as having a salutary 
character, in so far as it is a protest against 
that traditionalism which constantly adds to 
the things which must be believed, and is also an 
assertion of the sufficiency of the universal 
creeds of Christendom. It is, in this aspect of 
it, essentially a catholic as opposed to a secta- 
rian school. 

Another characteristic of this school is its 
recognition of the importance and value of mod- 
ern critical investigation. This critical investi- 



90 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



gation, especially as applied to the Scriptures, 
has been regarded with great suspicion by 
many excellent Christian people. It has, un- 
questionably, been greatly abused. But those 
who entertain such apprehensions forget that 
criticism is constructive as well as destructive, 
and that the right use of the critical method is 
sure to repair the evil which a false use of it has 
occasioned. The critical method is simply an 
approved instrument of investigation — a means 
for ascertaining historical truth. The use of 
this method does, indeed, from time to time, 
modify the generally received interpretations, 
especially of the historical portions of the Scrip- 
tures. It may lead to new conclusions as to the 
date and authorship of certain books of the 
sacred canon, and the various circumstances un- 
der which they were written. It compels, per- 
haps, a reconsideration of the grounds upon 
which various ecclesiastical claims are urged, 
substituting new and surer grounds, it may be, 
in their stead. But all this is not only to be 
expected, but is eminently desirable ; unless it 
is to be supposed that in all these respects the 
Church has long since reached the full measure 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



91 



of the truth. The value of the results to be at- 
tained abundantly justifies the risks attendant 
upon their attainment. 

I have already suggested the danger that this 
tendency may not only throw off some of the su- 
perfluous accretions of Christianity, but go to the 
length of denying or undervaluing some of the 
fundamental articles of the faith, the very basis 
on which Christianity rests. This is especially 
true in regard to the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment. Too many, in this school of thought, 
while giving special prominence to the man- 
ward side of the Atonement, have ignored its 
Godward efficacy, and lifted their hands per- 
ilously near this altar of the sacrifice of the Son 
of God. But in the historic Church, with its 
unchanging creeds and universal testimony, this 
tendency has been kept within bounds ; and we 
are to remember that it is to this very spirit of 
free inquiry and independence of mere tra- 
ditionalism that we owe the Anselmian theory 
of the Atonement. 

This line of thought leads naturally to the 
importance of other schools in the Church, not 
only for their qualifying and restraining influ- 



92 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



ences, but also for the special service which 
they render to the cause of catholic truth. 
There is a class of views of Christianity and 
the Church which has exercised a stupendous 
influence upon Christian history, and is exceed- 
ingly prominent in our own Church at the pres- 
ent day. It is designated, somewhat according 
to the various stages of its development, as the 
High- Church, Sacramentarian, Tractarian, and 
Ritualistic school. I am to speak frankly of 
its dangerous influence and candidly of the ser- 
vice which it has rendered to our common 
Christianity. The deep-seated evil which so 
largely pervades this school is its idea of the 
ministry as related to God and man. It is not 
the idea of a historic church and a transmission 
of orders, from the apostles' time to the pres- 
ent hour, or even of the exclusive validity of an 
episcopally constituted ministry. The former 
idea is held by many Low-Churchmen, the lat- 
ter by many High-Churchmen, who go no fur- 
ther than that. But the idea to which I refer 
is the sacerdotal — the idea that the ministry of 
the Gospel is a true and proper priesthood for 
the performance of essentially mediatorial acts 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



93 



between man and God. In this I find great 
peril to the Church to day. I can not express 
the apprehensions which I have in regard to its 
influence in our beloved Church, or the impor- 
tance of a vigorous development of opposite in- 
fluences and tendencies. But I turn from what 
I regard as its false and dangerous character to 
that inestimable service which this school does 
render to the truth, by the firmness with which 
it holds — whatever else it loses — the funda- 
mental facts and ideas of historic Christianity. 
And here I refer especially to the sacrificial 
character of the death of Christ. I find its the- 
ology pervaded with the sacrificial idea. In the 
fellowship of this truth I can follow, even be- 
yond the boundaries of our Protestant Church, 
the sad footsteps of J ohn Henry Newman and 
Frederic W. Faber. While amazed, and strick- 
en in heart by the perversions by which I am 
thus surrounded, I seem, for the moment at 
least, to see every corruption made sweet by the 
sprinkling of the precious blood of the Lamb 
of God, and every dark place illumined by the 
light of the cross. 

The ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism of this 



94 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



school are more or less restrained by the Broad- 
Church tendency, just as the latter is qualified 
and kept back from a fatal rationalism, in large 
measure, by the former. But both need a still 
more powerful and purifying influence, and 
that I find in evangelical truth. 

I am very far from claiming that evangelical 
truth and feeling are found only in the school 
to which I now refer ; but to me it has always 
seemed that they were most prominent among 
those who are known as the Low- Church or 
Evangelical party. Therefore it is that, al- 
though holding views of the sacraments which 
very few of them would accept, and of the his- 
toric character of the institution of the minis- 
try which some at least of them, would prob- 
ably hesitate to avow, I cannot but say that my 
sympathies are chiefly with them, for they hold 
most dear that which I believe to be at the very 
centre of the Gospel of Christ. I know that 
the evangelical system, in the hands of fallible 
men, is attended with many and great dan- 
gers. Its indifference to the external and for- 
mal leads sometimes to the undervaluing of his- 
toric institutions, and of the body, so to speak, 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



95 



of Christianity. Its dependence upon the teach- 
ing of the Holy Spirit is sometimes accompanied 
by a confounding of the impulses and conclu- 
sions of the individual with the promptings of 
the Holy Ghost. Its strong, high view of the 
relation of Christ to the believer, and the sub- 
stitution of the one for the other, sometimes 
leads to such an identification in idea of the 
two that the believer comes to regard himself, 
not only as forgiven and accepted, but as sin- 
less in Christ. This system needs free inquiry 
and investigation, untrammeled by prejudice 
and accepted interpretation. It needs the in- 
fluence of the great institutional character of 
the Church to save it from mere individualism. 
What is there in it, then, that constitutes its 
inestimable value? It is this : It tells me, and 
thus interprets the deepest wants and most ar- 
dent longings of my spirit, that when my soul 
understands that Christ is a Saviour from sin, 
and rests on him for salvation, I am saved. I 
may have been under a gracious covenant be- 
fore, which has sheltered my infancy and early 
youth, or I may have never received the sign 
of the covenant, and been a wanderer all my 



96 THE CHURCH'S LAW 



days from God, but this trust in Christ has 
made me now, once for all, a child of God. 
There are no progressive steps in the accept- 
ance of my trusting soul and the forgiveness of 
my sins. The progress is all in me, in my life 
of love. Sinful though I am, I am forgiven 
and pressed to the very heart of God. I have 
a power in the consciousness of this which 
moves me, as nothing else could, to a consecra- 
tion of myself, body, soul, and spirit, to the 
Saviour. I find here the u power of God unto 
salvation, to every one that belie veth. M 

This is the central point of the evangelical 
system. There is a legal Christianity — legal, 
but Christianity still. With it pardon and ac- 
ceptance are progressive and dependent upon 
Christian living. Religion is, under such a sys- 
tem, oftentimes a matter of most intense earnest- 
ness. I wonder at the holy lives which are led 
by those who are toiling after the peace of as- 
sured acceptance with God. But it is hard 
work. It is unnecessary bondage. It is a fail- 
ure to avail ourselves of the boundless love and 
grace of the Saviour. The Gospel is good news 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



97 



pre-eminently because it first says, " Go in 
peace/ 1 and then, " Sin no more." 

We have thus considered the mutual relations 
of various parties or schools in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. I have endeavored to deal 
justly with all, and to acknowledge the respects 
in which the Church is indebted to all. At the 
same time I have frankly avowed where my own 
sympathies chiefly lie. Those sympathies are 
determined not so much by objections to what 
are commonly called Church principles, as to 
the prominence which they are sometimes made 
to assume in the Christian system. I am aware 
that Low-Church principles, as well as High- 
Church principles, may be made to stand in the 
place of the most important and precious spirit- 
ual truths. One class of these principles has 
no more business in such a place than another. 
The importance of every such principle is to be 
determined simply by the prominence which it 
affords to the central, saving truth of the Gos- 
pel. Like a mountain range, in which summit 
after summit, rising higher and higher in the 
clouds, prepares us for the central peak, which 
towers majestically above them all, these vari- 



98 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



ous principles and truths concerning the 
Church are helpful to the soul only when they 
are kept in due subordination, and lead on to 
that inner and higher circle of truth which sur- 
rounds the transcendently glorious person of 
Christ. 

In this view of the Church, as a higher form 
of the Family and the State, I have represented 
it as fixed and unchangeable in certain funda- 
mental institutions and truths, but as plastic and 
capable of indefinite modification in whatever is 
necessary to adapt it to its mission from age to 
age. In the present state of things it would 
seem to be necessary, in order to the healthful 
activity of the Church, that there should be a 
free development of these various historical 
schools, each being qualified and restrained by 
the others. But if there is to be this freedom 
of development, then manifestly whatever is of 
merely human origin and authority in the 
Church may be subject to modification, under 
the pressure of some manifest necessity or in- 
disputable expediency. And even within the 
range of accepted and authoritative formularies, 
there must be large room for the free play of in- 



OF DEVELOPMENT, 



99 



dividual opinion and conscientious conviction. 
We are to remember also that no age has a 
monopoly of authority in regard to the institu- 
tions or the faith of the Church. While cer- 
tain periods in history have doubtless occupied 
a peculiarly advantageous position for testifying 
to that which is divine and essential in the 
Church, and also for establishing its formula- 
ries and various human appliances, yet upon 
each age, after all, the responsibility must rest, 
of deciding what is permanent and what is 
transient in that which it has inherited from 
the past. 

I am not insensible to the difficulties and 
dangers to which this idea of life and move- 
ment, largely unrestrained, in the Church 
might lead. It may be said that it gives free 
play to error. So it does, within certain limits, 
so far as repression by ecclesiastical discipline is 
concerned. But notice that it is not toleration 
of error which I advocate. The question is 
simply, what is the best method of restraining 
and suppressing it ? And I maintain that it is 
more effectually restrained and suppressed by the 
moral power of the truth than by any possible 



100 



THE CHURCH'S LAW 



ecclesiastical machinery. Setting out of the ac- 
count now such ecclesiastical proceedings as 
are, unfortunately, sometimes necessary for im- 
moralities or acts intentionally hostile to the 
Church, though committed under cover of alle- 
giance to it, it seems to me exceedingly desir- 
able to limit, as far as possible, the number of 
offences which can be committed against the 
discipline or the faith of the Church. A ca- 
nonical system, very simple and general in its 
character, would seem to be one of the best 
methods, not only of cultivating a sense of per- 
sonal responsibility and honor among the clergy, 
but of avoiding the needless vexations which 
attend ecclesiastical proceedings upon points 
which involve very little, if any thing, of a 
moral character. The whole drift of what has 
been said would of course be adverse to any such 
proceedings in regard to questions of doctrine 
or practice which have been controverted points 
between historical schools in the Church. So 
far as questions of ecclesiastical practices are 
concerned, they may, as a general rule, be left 
safely to the paternal influence of the bishop in 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, except where 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 101 



they are indisputably anti-Protestant, on the 
one hand, or anti-Episcopal, on the other. 
And as to questions of doctrine, all experience 
would lead us to great caution in the use of ec- 
clesiastical discipline, except in cases of denial 
of some article of the primitive and universal 
creeds. 

In connection with this consideration of the 
development of the Church by means of antag- 
onistic schools of opinion, it would be well, if 
there were time, to consider the correlative law 
by which the reconciliation of antagonisms is 
effected. But that is a view of the subject 
which cannot now be pursued. It is sufficient 
to say that there is manifestly a conservative 
law in the Church, as there is in society, by 
which, after reaching a certain point of diver- 
gence, different schools of opinion begin to ap- 
proach each other. We speak of this as a law. 
It is a law, but only as every method of divine 
operation is a law. For here we recognize, amid 
all diversities, the influence of that Holy Spirit 
which " maketh men to be of one mind in a 
house,' ■ and under whose guidance, through all 
the strange vicissitudes of the Christian dispen- 



102 THE CHURCH'S LAW 



sation, there shall at last be a Church which is 
high in its historical character, and the tra- 
ditional system which shall have brought down 
to the remotest period " the faith once delivered 
to the saints"; broad in its grand catholicity 
and its grateful appropriation of the best fruits 
of science and culture ; and evangelical in the 
joyful consciousness of a present and completed 
redemption, and in acts of glad obedience to 
him who hath made all nigh unto God by the 
blood of his cross. 

I cannot understand how any student of the 
history of the Church can doubt that there is a 
divine power back of all the phenomena which 
are presented, and overruling all for the accom- 
plishing of this consummation. That divine 
power is the presence of Christ, walking ever 
among the golden candlesticks. There is no 
meaning in these phenomena of the history of 
the Church, or power in its services and sacra- 
ments, unless they are luminous with the light 
of the Saviour's presence. To one who stands ; 
in some cathedral, in the twilight hour, the ! 
great windows present only strangely confused * 
forms and lustreless colors, and it is not until 



OF DEVELOPMENT. 



103 



the sun rises upon them, and floods them with 
its beams, that saints and apostles stand forth 
in their holy beauty, and the symbolized facts 
of the Gospel dawn upon the soul. And so the 
whole visible organism of the Church presents 
but a cold and meaningless aspect when the 
light of the Saviour's presence cannot be dis- 
cerned. But when, behind the whole, the Sun 
of Eighteousness moves in the glory which no 
man can approach unto, then it is all instinct 
with divine significance, and radiant with 
gleams of the beauty of that land which is still 
afar off. 

The subject which we have been considering 
brings us under the influence of all those in- 
spiring and hallowed associations which sur- 
round the State and the Family, intensified and 
spiritualized in the higher sphere to which they 
are now applied. We are stirred by a patriotic 
spirit, but its object is the city of God. We are 
moved with filial and fraternal affections, but 
the sphere in which they belong is the family 
of him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. No more tender influences could be 
conceived of than those which in these relations 



104 THE CHURCH'S LAW 



move us to love and honor one for another, and 
devotion to our common Lord and Master. 
Under the inspiration of these feelings we shall 
labor with a high and noble enthusiasm for 
Christ. We shall see one evil after another dis- 
appear. The dark temples of superstition and 
idolatry will be overthrown, and the holy tem- 
ple of our God be everywhere built up. Upon 
the bells which proclaim the joyful news to the 
listening nations shall be inscribed " Holiness 
to the Lord " ; and as their glad music thrills 
the sky, we may exclaim, with assured confi- 
dence of the speedy advent of the day when the 
" kingdoms of this world shall become the king- 
doms of our Lord and of his Christ," 

" Ring out a slowly dying cause 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
"With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

" Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be !" 



THE CHUKCH'S MISSION 

OF 

RECONCILIATION. 



I should show but a poor appreciation of the 
privilege of addressing so many of my brethren 
of the clergy did I not endeavor to say some- 
thing which may be helpful and encouraging 
to us in our special work. In seeking to do 
this, my thoughts have been guided by that 
wonderful declaration of St. Paul which is 
found in 2 Cor. 5 : 18 — " He hath committed 

TO US THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION. 5 5 

If in the treatment of the subject I shall 
speak of reconciliations in the kingdom of 
Christ other than the first great reconciliation 
of the soul to God, it is certainly not because I 
fail to realize the transcendent importance of 
that the primary aspect of the subject, but be- 



106 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



cause through these other reconciliations, of 
which I shall speak, there is present always the 
underlying idea of reconciliation to God. 

I cannot resist the conviction that a special 
mission of reconciliation now presents itself 
to the Pkotestakt Episcopal Church. This 
conviction is the result of a consideration of 
certain peculiarities of our own time, and of 
the attitude in regard to them which this 
Church is capable of assuming. These 
peculiarities it is not difficult to recognize. 
They are for the most part the results of a 
transition in society from an old to a new 
order of things. At no period in the history 
of the world has there been so eager and per- 
sistent a questioning of every thing that claims 
authority over the human mind, and such 
restlessness under established institutions. 
The process so far has been chiefly disintegrat- 
ing and destructive. The great conservative 
and constructive forces upon which the wel- 
fare of society depends have not yet specially 
asserted themselves. To the mind which has 
well considered the divine purpose as it has 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



107 



unfolded itself in history there are openings 
in the clouds through which we can catch 
glimpses of the light of the coming order and 
peace ; there are many voices which promise 
the final reconciliation of the antagonisms 
which now disquiet the world. But the pre- 
vailing aspect is that of confusion, uncer- 
taint}^, and doubt ; and venerable institutions 
of Church and State, and old opinions and 
philosophies, and ancient modes of faith, seem 
to be shaken to their very foundations. 

It is impossible that this state of things can 
long continue. The human mind very soon 
rebels against a mere negative condition ; and 
positive institutions and beliefs, of some kind, 
are sure to emerge from the present dreary 
waste. The problem which presents itself, 
and is sure to be more or less satisfactorily 
solved, is to discriminate between what is tran- 
sient and what is permanent in human life and 
society ; to determine what can safely be 
thrown aside as dangerous or obsolete, and 
what must be retained as essential ; what are 
the mere fleeting prejudices of mankind, and 



108 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



what are, if there are any such, immutable 
and eternal truths. 

In order to a satisfactory solution of this 
problem there must be a reconciliation of 
various antagonistic elements in society. In 
considering the mission of our own Church 
in regard to this work of reconciliation, we 
are left to inquire : 

I. ^That Christian Church stands in the 
most favorable position for this work ? 

II. How can men alienated from Christianity 
by speculative difficulties be reconciled 
to the Church I 

III. Upon what principles can a reconciliation 
of various Christian bodies be brought 
about ? 

IY. How can the antagonisms in our own 
Church best be reconciled ? 

L There is a phenomenon, in our time, which 
is well worthy of our consideration, and that is 
a tendency to a return to the Church of Rome. 
I do not now refer to the Tractarian and Hit- 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



109 



ualistic movement, however much that may 
have brought about a different feeling in re- 
gard to some of the peculiarities of that Church. 
I refer now to a sympathy which is springing 
up for the Church of Rome in quarters where 
perhaps it would least be expected, and where 
its existence is of very great significance. No 
one can have failed to notice the altered tone, 
of late years, in regard to this subject. The 
bitterness of earlier controversies seems in a 
great measure to have passed away. Educated 
men generally are inclined to admit that the 
Church of Rome has played an important part 
in history, in the preservation of civilization 
and in the maintenance of a spiritual order in 
society. Political considerations, especially in 
Germany, are bringing about a different atti- 
tude toward the Papacy. Prince Bismarck 
seeks the alliance of his old enemies against 
new and more dangerous foes. The policy of 
Leo XIII. seems to be likely to be conciliatory, 
and to adapt itself to some of the most deeply- 
felt wants of the age. There are many men 
who are tired of mere individualism, are op- 



110 



THE CUURCH'S MISSION 



pressed with the confusion in which free in- 
quiry has resulted, and, in the reaction which 
has followed, long for some venerable author- 
ity to which they can submit themselves. In 
this state of mind they welcome the most as- 
tounding claims of the Church of Rome. If 
science has driven them, as they think, to a 
doubt of immortality and a denial of the possi- 
bility of knowledge of God, then, in despair 
of finding a religion which can be reconciled 
with reason, they embrace one which proudly 
sets reason at defiance. And, more than this, 
there are timid men, in all our churches, who, 
distrusting their own conclusions and alarmed 
at the confusion which prevails, are glad to 
recognize a great institution which claims to 
think for them, and demands of them only 
that they shall believe and obey. Various in- 
fluences combine to give strength to a move- 
ment which tends toward authority, unity, 
and positiveness in religious institutions. The 
certain end of such a movement, unless it can 
find itself elsewhere satisfied, is in the Church 
of Rome. 



OF RECONCILIATION, 



111 



What is needed, in order to meet most 
beneficently the peculiar wants of the present 
day, is the authority which belongs to catholic 
truth and historical continuity in an institu- 
tion which is in sympathy with freedom and 
progress ; which encourages scientific inquiry ; 
which recognizes the right and responsibility 
of private judgment ; and which testifies, with 
no doubtful voice, to the fundamental truths 
of a personal God, a divine and redeem- 
ing Christ, and a personal immortality for 
man. 

It is a principle common to all forms of 
Christianity, outside of the Church of Rome, 
that there is not, and cannot be, any visible head 
of the Church on earth. The idea, therefore, 
of an universal empire, with any one on earth 
representing the headship of Christ, is that 
very feature of the Papal system which all the 
rest of Christendom rejects. The reconcilia- 
tion of the non-Christian elements in society 
to Christianity, and of the Christian elements 
into a new unity, would naturally, therefore, 
take form in national churches, with a com- 



112 



THE CHURCH'S' MISSION 



mon faith and rites of worship, and in com- 
munion with each other. 

One of the most striking features in the his- 
tory of Christianity has been the existence of 
national establishments, constituted by a union 
of Church and State. The tendency in our 
own time is strongly in the direction of dis- 
establishment and the independence of all re- 
lations of the State on the one hand, and the 
Church on the other. AVhether this is to be 
a permanent tendency, or whether it is alto- 
gether a salutary one, may be a question. 
There are many indications that the tendency 
may be indefinitely resisted by the Church of 
England. And when we remember the grand 
history of that institution, and see how it has 
its roots everywhere in the social and domestic 
life of the people, and how beneficently it is 
now gathering all the best interests of the na- 
tion under its protecting shade, we cannot re- 
gard its preservation as a national establish- 
ment otherwise than with gratitude and joy. 
But where established churches do not exist, 
there is no present prospect that they ever will 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



113 



exist. Relations which were formerly com- 
pulsory are more and more becoming volun- 
tary, and churches in the future, if they are 
to become in any sense national, must become 
so because they are the best expression of the 
religious life of the nation, and are accepted by 
the people as such. 

I am proceeding on the supposition that the 
mission of reconciliation- cannot be satisfactorily 
accomplished — that is, that modern thought 
and progress cannot be reconciled with Chris- 
tianity, and different forms of Christianity 
cannot be reconciled with each other, unless 
our Protestant Christendom is unified upon the 
basis of the historic faith, and organized into 
institutions which, in the sense already laid 
down, shall be National Churches. 

It is vain to say that the same power can be 
secured and the same desirable results accom- 
plished by the co-existence of various socie- 
ties, independent of each other, and each 
claiming to present some special aspect of 
Christianity. When we consider what the re- 
ligion of Christ is, the attitude of these various 



114 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



Christian bodies toward each other presents a 
deplorable spectacle. The work of the Church 
of Christ in the world is carried on at the most 
tremendous disadvantage and with the most 
needless sacrifice of influence and means. It 
is probably no exaggeration to say that as much 
of the energy of Christian men is absorbed in 
attacking other forms of Christianity and de- 
fending their own as in efforts for the conver- 
sion of the w T orld. It is time that this con- 
dition of things should come to an end, and 
that men should labor for some form of Chris- 
tianity which shall win to itself the allegiance 
of Christian people, and become, not by civil 
compulsion, but by voluntary acceptance, the 
Church of the nation. 

The highest ideal of the Church of the fu- 
ture is, of course, the manifestation to the 
world of the organic unity of all Christian 
people. "When we speak of " organic unity" 
we mean, of course, the unity which belongs 
to and is manifested by a body animated by 
one vitalizing principle. This is true, to some 
extent, of the Church regarded as the " blessed 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



115 



company of all faithful people." But this 
unity is comparatively powerless because there 
is little consciousness of it in the body itself, 
and because there is almost an entire absence of 
any external manifestation. This divided and 
segregated state, in which there is so little con- 
sciousness or manifestation of unity, is the 
result of wrong opinions, wrong feelings, and 
lack of spiritual directness and power. It has 
been profoundly said that " vice separates 
men, while virtue unites them," and it is the 
"vice" of the Christian community — that is, 
the defective moral and spiritual sense — which 
keeps the faithful in Christ Jesus from the as- 
piration and realization of unity. 

I have said that this organic unity of all 
Christian people is the highest ideal of the 
Church of the future. The full realization of 
this in the sense of any manifestation of unity, 
including all the great branches into which 
Christendom is divided, is so remote from 
any present indications as hardly to encourage 
any practical effort. But the opportunity cer- 
tainly lies open to us to labor for reconcilia- 



116 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



tion and unity, with confident hopes of suc- 
cess, within certain limits, and in certain rela- 
tions which we are abundantly able to reach 
and affect. It may be well at the same time 
to remember that the larger realization of an 
all-embracing unity has been regarded by some 
of the profoundest thinkers of this century as 
something to be directly labored for, and the 
Anglican Church as the great agency by which 
it is to be accomplished. Most remarkable in 
this respect is the testimony of Count Joseph 
de Maistre, one of the most celebrated writers 
of the ultramontane school in the Church of 
Rome. !N otwithstanding the natural preju- 
dices of his ecclesiastical position, he says, in 
his " Considerations sur la France, 55 that if 
Christians are to be drawn together it would 
seem that the impulse must proceed from 
the Church of England.* With such a testi- 

* " Si jamais les Chretiens se rapprochent, comme tout 
les y invite, il semble que la motion doit partir de l'eglise 
d'Angleterre. Le presbyterienisme fut une ceuvre fran- 
caise, et par consequent une osuvre exageree. Nous 
sommes trop eloignes des sectateurs d'un culte trop peu 
substantiel ; il n'y a pas moyen de nous entendre. Mais 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



117 



mony, from such a source, it may not be un- 
suitable for us to feel that there is confided to 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, which has 
the same faith and order as the Church of 
England, a special mission of reconciliation in 
our own land, and a special agency in the 
building up of the future Church of the na- 
tion. 

II. An important aspect of this work of 
reconciliation is suggested by the alienation of 
many intellectual and educated men from 
Christianity. Very much that might be said 
on this point would apply to the whole Chris- 
tian body as well as to any one particular 
Church, but there are certain respects in 
which I think our own Church will be seen to 

1'eglise anglicane, qui nous touche d'une main, touche 
de Tautre ceux que nous ne pouvons toucher ; et quoi- 
que, sous un certain point de vue, elle soit en butte aux 
coups des deux partis, et qu'elle presente le spectacle un 
peu ridicule d'un re volte qui preche l'obeissance, cepen- \ 
dant elle est tres precieuse sous d'autres aspects, et peut 
etre consideree comme un de ces intermedes chimiques, 
capables de rapprocher des elemens inassociables de leur 
nature." 

Considerations sur La France, Par M. Le Cte. Jph. 
De Maistre. 



118 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



possess special advantages for the discharge of 
this mission. 

It is undoubtedly true that there are many 
minds, at the present day, alienated from 
Christianity, not from aversion to its moral or 
spiritual principles, but on account of certain 
intellectual difficulties with which it is embar- 
rassed. One of these difficulties which is most 
widely felt and most injurious in its results is 
that which arises from the supposed impossi- 
bility of verifying those facts which lie at the 
foundation of Christianity, such as the being 
of a personal God, the supernatural character 
of redemption in Christ, and the personal im- 
mortality of man. Modern habits in the in- 
vestigation of truth ; the employment of the 
inductive method ; the invariable use of veri- 
fication in scientific inquiry, have led to the 
denial of the character of knowledge to any 
conclusions except those to which these meth- 
ods have led. As a natural consequence men 
will say : ' All this that you claim in regard 
to religion may be true. It is impossible, per- 
haps, to disprove it, but, on the other hand, it 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



119 



is impossible to prove it, and we cannot be 
asked to assert our belief in regard to a sub- 
ject of which we have no knowledge, and are 
incompetent, therefore, either to affirm or 
deny. 5 This agnosticism, this denial of the 
possibility of any knowledge of the infinite 
and the absolute, stands, therefore, an appar- 
ently insuperable barrier to the simplest and 
most fundamental conceptions in religion. 

The removal of this difficulty, and the recon- 
ciliation of such men to Christianity, must be 
accomplished by different methods from those 
too often employed. To meet this agnosticism 
by fierce denunciation and a denial to it of any 
rational or legitimate character, to treat those 
who avow it as if they were morally bad as 
well as intellectually astray, is a mistake of the 
most dangerous character. There is a certain 
truth in this position, which, if we are bold and 
honest, we shall not fail to recognize. To rec- 
ognize it boldly and honestly is the first step 
toward the removal of the difficulty by which 
it is attended. 

Suppose, then, that we have recognized the 



120 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



value of the scientific method, and admitted 
that the purely intellectual processes by which 
it is sought to establish the fundamental 
principles of religion are not followed by the 
same kind of assurance that attends a result in 
the physical sciences reached by the inductive 
method. Suppose, further, that we have admit- 
ted that, until some satisfactory method for the 
removal of the difficulty is pointed out, the 
agnostic position does not seem to be alto- 
gether irrational. ^Ve are then prepared to 
take a ground where we can secure for reli- 
gion all the certitude to be desired, and from 
which it is impossible that we can be dislodged. 

For when we have admitted all this, which 
we are honestly bound to admit, we can assert, 
without fear of reasonable denial, that certi- 
tude is possible in regard to certain matters 
where verification is impossible ; that in cer- 
tain respects where we cannot verify we are 
bound to believe, and that the fundamental 
principles of religion are of this character. 
Take, for instance, our certitude in regard to 
the actual existence of a past, such as we re- 



OF RECONCILIATION 121 



member it, or as it lias been certified to us by 
the memory of others. This is a conclusion 
which has not been reached by the inductive 
method. It is not susceptible of verification, 
and yet we are compelled to believe it by the 
very structure of our minds. The same is 
true of the fact of our personal identity and 
of the continuity of nature. A certainty 
which excludes the possibility of doubt is not 
attainable even by the scientific method. It 
is simply a conviction engendered by a very 
high degree of probability. Just such a sort 
of probability attaches itself to the fundamen- 
tal principles of religion. The universal ten- 
dency of the mind to believe in these invests 
them with a very high degree of probability. 
But then, further than this, the testimony of 
certain faculties of our nature, which are most 
valuable in the search after this class of truths, 
contributes to the certitude we seek. The 
moral sense, which is a fact as much as any 
other, demands this result, and those affec- 
tions which the moral sense declares to be the 
best and noblest element in us, when allowed 



122 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



to exercise tlieir influence upon the mind, lead 
to these fundamental principles of religion. 

This brings us to a point of great practical 
importance in the consideration of this subject. 
We have found that there is a kind of certi- 
tude which is intuitive in its character. We 
intuitively believe in the reality of our past, in 
our personal identity at different times, and in 
the continuity of nature. We have similar in- 
tuitions in regard to the fundamental princi- 
ples of religion, but with this difference, that 
in the case of religion there is the added testi- 
mony of the moral state and the affections. 
Thus the existence of a personal God, with 
the attribute of infinite goodness, is probably 
not susceptible of proof by the scientific 
method ; but we have an intuitive conviction 
of its truth, and in a state of the affections 
which the moral sense pronounces to be good, 
we believe it as a matter of course. 

This ministry of the affections, in the search 
for truth, has deeply impressed the minds of 
the profoundest philosophers. Pascal has 
beautifully said : 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



123 



" Diviue things are infinitely above nature, and God 
only can place them in the soul. He has designed that 
they should pass from the heart into the head, and not 
from the head into the heart, and so as it is necessary to 
know human things in order to love them, it is neces- 
sary to love divine things in order to know them." 

The same truth has been gracefully ex- 
pressed by the present Archbishop of Dublin, 
when he says, 

u To halls of heavenly truth admission wouldst thou 
win ? 

Oft knowledge stands without, while love may enter in." 

These ideas, I am aware, have given rise, in 
some cases, to an extravagant mystical the- 
ology, but, foreign as the whole system of mys- 
ticism is to our present mode of thinking, 
there is good reason to believe that the mysti- 
cal apprehension of truth is an essential ele- 
ment in a complete system of philosophy, and 
that, while a theology founded merely upon 
intellect and logic, or merely upon feeling and 
intuition, will be defective, one that is wisely 
compounded of both elements will be symmet- 
rical and complete in the harmony and fulness 
of truth. 



124 THE CHURCH S MISSION 



We may depend upon it that this age, hard 
and materialistic as it is, is just in a condition 
to respond to this presentation of the ministry 
of the affections in the apprehension of truth. 
Frederick Robertson, with his acute sense of 
what is most profound in human nature, says 
that 6 men find a relief from the materialism 
to which they feel themselves compelled in 
science, in the mystical element in the poetry 
of Tennyson and Browning.' Show men that 
there are paths of sentiment and affection which 
lead to heritages of truth, assured to them, by 
Catholic consent and tradition, as divinely 
communicated to the world, and many a 
choice spirit will be won from the darkness, of 
doubt and unbelief , and reconciled to faith in 
God, in Christ, and the eternal life. 

The attitude of the clergy in reference to 
the results of scientific inquiry is of very great 
importance in this connection. Men, for the 
most part, receive their impressions of Chris- 
tianity from the representations of the clergy, 
and thus Christianity is oftentimes held re- 
sponsible for the misapprehensions of its advo- 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



12r> 



cates. The clergy, as a class, are exceedingly 
averse to any modifications of their views of 
truth, not unnaturally, j^erhaps, confounding 
their views of truth with truth itself. It is 
too often forgotten that theology is a progres- 
sive science ; that while there is no change in 
the facts upon which it is based, there is a very 
great change in the mode in which those facts 
are apprehended and expressed. One of the 
principal agencies by which this modification 
and change are brought about is scientific in- 
vestigation, and its result in a knowledge of 
the works of God. This knowledge renders 
certain theological views, which formerly were 
held, without disquietude, absolutely unen- 
durable. Happily the dogmatic statements of 
the Church, which are to be regarded as prac- 
tically unchangeable, are very few, and relate 
only to the fundamental facts of the Christian 
religion. All doctrinal statements outside of 
the doctrinal basis of the Church, however 
logically they may seem to be deduced from 
it, are properly liable to modification in each 
age. The discoveries which each generation 



126 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



makes as to the facts and laws of nature, the 
more thorough knowledge of history, the study 
of comparative philology and theology, all fur- 
nish us with keys to various treasure-houses ol 
divine truth. They open to us new revelations 
of the being and attributes of God. The rec- 
ognition of this, and an attitude of encourage- 
ment toward the freest scientific inquiry, 
would do much to remove those prejudices of 
scientific men toward Christianity which are 
the result of the prejudices of Christian men 
against science. 

I feel no hesitation in urging, in the interest 
of Christianity, the encouragement of the 
freest scientific inquiry. ISTo scientific conclu- 
sions, be they true or false, so long as they are 
confined within the admitted sphere of science, 
can impugn any statement of the universal 
creeds. When the man of science says that 
he studies nature without any preconceived 
ideas of how it came to exist, or what is its 
purpose, if it has any purpose, we say, i Very 
well, we are satisfied with that. All that we 
ask is that you shall give us the results of your 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



127 



observation, and the benefit of your experience 
in the co-ordination of facts.' When he says 
further, 6 1 find in matter all the promise and 
potency of hfe,' we are very far from being 
alarmed as if he had discovered that the idea 
of God might now be dispensed with. We 
do not need to ask, for every mind will ask 
for itself, How did there come to be there this 
promise and potency of life ? He may go on 
and say, ' I find nothing else there.' 6 Very 
well, ' we reply ; 6 what did you expect to find, 
or what do you suppose we expected you to 
find ? You do not think, do you, that we are 
disappointed because you did not find God 
there ? Do you not know that it is a funda- 
mental principle in Christian philosophy that 
you will not find God in any or all phenomena 
of the natural world ? Go to the full extent 
of your scientific methods, they will not lead 
you out of nature into the spiritual and infinite 
world. Aflfirm this to your heart's content, 
and we will re-echo your affirmation. But if 
you go further and say that the scientific 
method is the only one which leads to knowl- 



128 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



edge and truth, and since it does not disclose 
God, therefore there is no God, or, at all 
events, it is impossible for us to know that 
there is, then we reply, Now you have gone 
beyond the sphere of science, and have en- 
tered a domain which is not peculiarly your 
own. We have gone with you through all 
your scientific investigations. We are ready 
to admit all your conclusions. "We do not care 
how great are the modifications which it may 
oblige us to make in our doctrinal views of 
any thing within the sphere of nature. But 
you have gone as far with the scientific method 
as it is possible for you to go. Now listen for 
a moment while we venture to speak of that 
which is inscrutable in and through nature. 
You have taught us wonderful truths about 
nature. You have not only made us under- 
stand better its marvellous beauty, but you 
have shown us that it is the embodiment of 
types, ideas, and orderly progression. We 
have learned of you that it is u saturated with 
thought, ? 5 and answers strangely to powers of 
perception and classification in ourselves. 



OF RECONCILIATION. 129 



Now is it not reasonable to admit that this 
constitution of nature gives probability to that 
conviction of which the human mind has in 
some way possessed itself, that there is an in- 
finite mind of which nature is the manifesta- 
tion ? Are there not universal beliefs and as- 
pirations which in this way find a rational ex- 
planation ? Does it not enable you to give a 
more probable account than otherwise of con- 
science and the moral sense ; and, as what we 
claim to be the facts of redemption present 
themselves side by side with the admitted facts 
of consciousness and experience, is there not 
such a satisfactory completeness and symmetry 
in the whole theory of nature and life, thus 
elaborated, as to make it a guiding principle of 
our being ? ' 

A more wise and just attitude toward scien- 
tific theories which seem to militate against 
certain supposed truths of revelation would do 
much toward reconciling men of science with 
the Christian faith. These theories are, some 
at least of them, rapidly passing into univer- 
sally accepted statements of facts. It would 



130 



THE CHURCH' 8 MISSION 



be well to remember that Christian men have 
had cause enough to regret their hasty opposi- 
tion to theories which they have supposed to 
be irreconcilable with revelation, but which 
they have subsequently been compelled to ad- 
mit to be true. This has been the case con- 
spicuously with astronomy and geology, and 
the result has been a more rational theism. 
It would not be any stranger if some theory 
of evolution, toward which scientific investi- 
gation is at present so persistently tending, 
should be finally established, and as a result 
nature should come to be regarded, not as 
proceeding from isolated creative acts, but as 
the product of an uninterrupted and all-per- 
vading divine process and agency. The effect, 
instead of being to remove God, in our idea of 
him, further from nature, would be to bring 
him nearer to our wondering apprehension 
and awe. 

These thoughts in regard to the reconcilia- 
tion of science to Christianity lead to a grand 
and most encouraging view of the ministry of 
science in God's providential government of 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



131 



the world. Men who devote themselves to 
the study of nature are laying broad and deep 
foundations for a structure the form and pur- 
pose of which, for the most part, they little 
understand. Upon these foundations they are 
rearing walls with giant piers and buttresses. 
Within are innumerable fair and majestic 
forms, flooded with unimaginable splendors of 
light. But here is a magnificent structure 
which it is impossible for them to finish. The 
crowning glory must come from other hands. 
It is the power of Christ alone which shall lift 
a Pantheon into the sky as the fitting dome 
of a structure made sacred by the works and 
word of God. For it is true of this structure 
also, that it is Christ " in whom the whole 
building, fitly framed together, groweth unto 
an holy temple in the Lord. " 

III. One of the most important problems of 
reconciliation that presents itself to our Church 
in this day is that which is involved in the re- 
lations we sustain to other Christian bodies out- 
side of the Church of Rome. These bodies, 
for the most part, trace their history as or- 



132 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



ganized institutions back to the period of the 
Reformation, some of them claiming to have 
existed in more or less distinct form since the 
Apostolic age. Without stopping now to 
consider the question whether episcopacy is 
essential to the being of a Church, it may be 
well for us, at the outset, to recognize the fact 
that there are Christian communions with 
whom we stand in very close relations, who 
are to be regarded as holding essentially the 
doctrines of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, 
as having the sacraments in their essential fea- 
tures, as retaining something at least of the 
original organization and government of the 
Church, and as exhibiting their Christian faith 
in lives of devotion and works of charity. 
There are many, no doubt, who hold that the 
differences between these Christian bodies and 
our own Church are of minor importance, and 
there are others who exaggerate these differ- 
ences, and regard them as making the line of 
division between that which possesses and that 
which is destitute of the essential elements of 
the Church. There are, however, many very 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



133 



thoughtful men in our time — and among them 
the well-known Dr. Goulburn, Dean of Nor- 
wich, who has presented his views very forci- 
bly in his book on the Holy Catholic Church — 
who hold that whatever may be the defects of 
organization in those Christian bodies, which 
retain substantially the Nicene faith, they are 
to be regarded as having acquired legitimacy 
by existing for so long a period, and as consti- 
tuting, therefore, integral parts of the Christian 
commonwealth. 

There are also, among us, those who believe 
strongly in the dependence of Christian life 
upon the sacraments and ordinances of the 
Church, and who therefore, from the admitted 
piety prevailing in these Christian bodies, infer 
the possession on their part of legitimate rites 
and ordinances. This is a position which com- 
bines high sacramentarian views with broad 
views of the ministry and the Church. 

It should be remembered that, whatever may 
be the exclusive views of individuals, the 
churches of the Anglican communion have 
never restrained liberty of opinion within the 



134 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



limits here indicated. 1S0 one view or doc- 
trine, therefore, in regard to this subject can be 
imposed as obligatory upon the member of 
the Church. 

Amid this allowable diversity of opinion, 
for which we have reason to be devoutly 
thankful, it may perhaps be found that there 
are more possibilities of unity of feeling and 
action than we have been accustomed to sup- 
pose. It is certainly desirable, at all events, 
that there should be a careful reconsideration 
of all the bearings of our attitude in regard 
to this subject. 

If it is simply a question of the uncondi- 
tional surrender of all these Christian bodies 
and the adoption of the institutions of the 
Church as we have received it ; if these so- 
cieties are utterly without legitimacy, and have 
nothing which they can usefully contribute to 
the Church of the future, then it necessarily 
follows that there is no attitude possible for us 
but that of unqualified hostility, united with 
the astounding claim, on our part, that instead 
of being simply one of the fragments (perhaps 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



135 



the nearest to the original type), into which 
our common Christianity has been unhappily 
divided, we alone are the representatives of the 
Church of Christ in this land, and upon us the 
whole responsibility of Christian institutions 
rests. For it will hardly be claimed that we 
share this representative position and responsi- 
bility with the Church of Rome in a sense in 
which we do not share them with other Chris- 
tian bodies. The claim that the Church of 
Rome stands in any closer relations to us than 
orthodox Protestant churches is fatal to our 
own position as a Church. It yields so much 
to Rome that it takes away from us all justifi- 
cation for separate existence. If then we 
claim a right to exist independently of Rome, 
and yet share no representative position and 
responsibility with any of the Protestant 
churches, we do assert for ourselves the pre- 
rogative, and assume for ourselves the tremen- 
dous obligations of being the only Church of 
Christ in this land. It is not too much to say 
that any theory must be fatally defective which 
leads to so preposterous a conclusion. 



136 



THE CHURCH 8 MISSION 



In avoiding such a conclusion we shall find 
that there is very important common ground 
upon which we, with the non-Episcopal 
churches, can stand. The pressure of the 
Church of Rome upon modern society will 
make a closer union among Christians not 
within its pale imperatively necessary. It is 
time that we carefully considered, not so 
much the points in which we differ as those 
in which we agree. Especially is it desirable 
that we should ascertain the original points of 
divergence, and what elements of the original 
Church have been carried on in the various 
forms into which it has been divided. It is 
the wise advice of Lord Bacon, in regard to 
the reformation of Church or State, to revert 
to their original institution and see wherein 
they have departed from the fundamental 
principles of their organization. This method 
of reform in the Church is historical, and re- 
gards the Church as an organization, with the 
germs of its future development present in it 
from the first. Its true growth must therefore 
be in the direction of germinal development. 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



137 



Its whole past must be carried forward into its 
future. 

The present embarrassments which stand in 
the way of the organic unity of the Church 
consist mainly in the existence of several ec- 
clesiastical polities, supposed to be antagonistic 
to each other. These polities are, in general 
terms, the Congregational, the Presbyterian, 
and the Episcopal. In examining the essential 
peculiarities of these polities, we shall find 
that they all existed contemporaneously in the 
early Church. The fundamental principle of 
Congregationalism is the independence of the 
Church in a particular place, the right of be- 
lievers, in a town or city, which was the origi- 
nal parish or diocese, to regulate their own 
worship and administer their own affairs. 
This was certainly true of the original diocese 
in the primitive Church. The fundamental 
principle of Presbyterianism is the parity of 
the presbytery, but it is a parity which admits, 
in its original idea, of a primus inter pares, 
which approaches very closely to the idea of 
episcopacy, and many, ngt only in the Church 



138 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



of England but in the Church of Rome, have 
held that a bishop does not belong to a differ- 
ent order, but simply holds a higher office than 
his brother presbyters in the Church. The 
essential element in episcopacy is the office of 
a bishop, succeeding to that office by an un- 
broken succession, to whom is committed the 
general superintendence of the diocese over 
which he presides, and to whom certain func- 
tions exclusively belong. 

JSTow suppose, and the supposition is made, 
not because it suggests any thing which may be 
practicable or desirable, at present, but simply 
in order to show what common elements there 
are in these various organizations — suppose, I 
say, that the modern diocese should come to 
be reduced to the primitive model, and com- 
prise only the Church in a single city and its 
suburbs ; suppose the principle of a larger 
diocesan independence were recognized ; sup- 
pose that one among the presbyters were set 
apart for life, in conformity to a law of suc- 
cession, to a particular office of superintend- 
ence, we should have a Chin-eh episcopal in 



OF EEC ONC ILIA TION. 1 3 9 

its polity, and yet comprising the essential ele- 
ments of Congregationalism and Presbyterian- 
ism. The old catholicity of organism would 
be restored. 

Without urging this point beyond a mere 
suggestion of these common features of or- 
ganization, I wish to say a word in regard to a 
matter which is of very great importance to 
us and to the non-Episcopal churches. I refer 
to the widening chasm, in our modern times, 
between the State and the Church. This ten- 
dency is fast rendering a Christian State, as 
such, impossible. It has originated, in great 
measure, in the fact that the Church, in our 
time, is, as a unit, invisible. It is a body the 
outlines of which are indefinite. It is wanting 
in organization. It can come into no relations, 
as an organism, with civil society. In the 
present imperfect catholicity of the Church it 
is impossible for the State to enter into rela- 
tions with it. They would be relations merely 
with some fragments or one-sided develop- 
ments of Christianity. It is not so much hos- 
tility on the part of the State to the Church 



140 THE CHURCH S MISSION 



which is leading everywhere to a separation 
between the two as the difficulty of ascertain- 
ing what is the common, universal Christianity, 
what is the Catholic Church. 

Until there is the development of a higher 
catholicity this tendency is inevitable. It will, 
in all probability, proceed in our own country 
and the other countries of Christendom, until 
every tie of union between the State and ec- 
clesiastical organizations is sundered. The 
Christian State as such will have disappeared. 
It is to little, if any, purpose that we resist 
this tendency. In the present condition of 
the Christian Church it would not be wise 
perhaps to endeavor to retain the institution 
of the Christian State. But the secularization 
of the State cannot certainly be the culmina- 
tion of Christian civilization. Nay, rather out 
of the monstrous character of such a position, 
thus made evident, will come the cry for a 
catholicity broad enough for the State to stand 
upon. After the failures of " independent 
morality," and Christless philosophies, and 
Godless civilizations, we may perhaps make 



OF RECONCILIATION. 141 



real to ourselves that grand unity of which 
Plato dreamed in the " Kepublic," or that still 
vaster and grander conception of St. Augus- 
tine in the " City of God." 

The question of present practical relations 
with the various non-Episcopal churches 
around us is one of very great importance, 
and not to be too hastily concluded. It 
may serve to guide us in the consideration 
of the question if we keep distinctly in 
mind what the end is which we wish to 
have accomplished. This end I hold unhesi- 
tatingly to be the restoration of organic 
unity. Whatever relations will tend to bring 
about this result upon the basis of the Catholic 
creeds and primitive order I believe to be pre- 
cisely the relations most desirable for us to 
cultivate. Our view of the character of these 
relations maybe somewhat modified if we con- 
sider them from a standing-point which we 
are not much accustomed to occupy, and ask 
not what we have to contribute to this organic 
union, but what these other Christian bodies 
have to contribute. We are sufficiently fa- 



142 THE CHURCE'S MISSION 



miliar with the advantages and excellences of 
our own system. We value very highly the 
historical character and unbroken continuance 
of the ministry of the Church from apostolic 
times. We attach great importance to the 
Church year, and to liturgical worship. The 
dogmatic basis of the Church, in the universal 
creeds, and the Church system of training, we 
believe to be of inestimable value in the devel- 
opment of Christian character. The compre- 
hensiveness and catholicity of the Church 
make it in its very nature the rallying ground 
for all the followers of Christ. Now let us 
see what special gifts and graces there are in 
the non-Episcopal churches which they would 
be able to contribute to the Church of the 
future. 

In the first place the numerical strength of 
these Christian bodies gives them very great 
importance and influence. For the most part 
great importance is attached among them to 
culture and learning among the clergy. We 
might naturally hesitate before entering into a 
comparison of our educational institutions with 



OF RECONCILIATION. 143 



theirs. They have covered the land with be- 
nevolent organizations, and their missionary 
operations are to be f ound in every part of the 
heathen world. They witness also for the 
most part to those features of Christianity 
which are of the most vital importance. They 
have blessed, and are blessing, the world with 
innumerable saintly lives. It would not be 
difficult perhaps to enlarge upon the weak 
points in these religious systems ; but that does 
not fall in with my present object, which is to 
dwell upon those points in which their acces- 
sion would enrich the Church of the future. 

What we need very much to cultivate is a 
generous appreciation of these excellences to 
which I have referred. We shall do well to 
seek and value the personal relations to which 
such appreciation would naturally lead. There 
is also a large field of charitable and even re- 
ligious effort in which association with Chris- 
tians of other churches would secure impor- 
tant results without any possible compromise of 
Church principles. The present Church law 
which forbids the participation, in any ser- 



1U 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



vice, in our congregations, of any persons who 
have not been episcopally ordained, or are not 
communicants of out Church, may be wise in 
view of all the circumstances involved. Be- 
fore there was such a law, liberty of action in 
this matter was a liberty to be vindicated if 
assailed. The law, however, as it now is, 
must be loyally obeyed. In the consideration 
of this subject, however, it should always be 
remembered that the relations between non- 
Episcopal churches and our own are not em- 
barrassed as they are in England by the fact 
that the Church is an institution of the State. 

Probably not much more can be done at 
present in the direction of organic unity than 
to make our own Church more and more truly 
evangelical and catholic, and to promote among 
ourselves a more intelligent and generous es- 
timate of those Christians from whom, for the 
time, we are separated. It may not be long 
before the dangers which threaten our com- 
mon Christianity will become so formidable as 
to force us into closer relations and union. 
What may be accomplished in this respect by 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



145 



a deeper sense than we now have of our under- 
lying unity in Christ we cannot now tell. 
May He who " maketh men to be of one mind 
in a house" bring this union to pass in His 
own good time ! 

IV. In order that our Church may most 
wisely and efficiently aid in giving form to the 
future Church of the nation, it is necessary that 
a reconciling ministry should be accomplished 
within its own borders, and among the various 
schools of opinion which it contains. We 
cannot expect that others will be drawn into 
unity with us until we have learned to be a 
unity among ourselves. We must start in our 
consideration of this part of our subject with 
the fact clearly impressed upon our minds 
that there has been an historical development 
of widely differing schools of opinion in the 
Church of England and the churches wdth 
which it is in communion. At no time since 
the period of the Reformation has there been 
so wide a diversity in any one ecclesiastical or- 
ganization. In those religious bodies even, in 
which there is supposed to be the largest free- 



146 



THE CHUBCH'S MISSION 



dom from authority, the limits of permissible 
belief are far more narrow than with us. This 
results from the fact that they avowedly exist 
for the purpose of exhibiting Christianity 
under some special type of it, and the presence, 
in such societies, of those to whom Christianity 
presents itself under another aspect, is not de- 
sired. To my mind this comprehensiveness is 
a great glory of the Church, and the recogni- 
tion and acceptance of it is the first step to- 
ward the unity for which, in the midst of di- 
versity, we are to seek. 

This diversity and comprehensiveness of the 
Church, in which the early schools of Eome 
and Alexandria are recalled to our minds, does 
not arise from any preconceived plan for the 
development of the Church, but is the inevi- 
table result of the circumstances in which the 
Church has been placed. It was inevitable 
that the spirit of the Roman Empire, to so 
many of the forms and to so much of the 
genius of which, the Church succeeded, should 
pass into the Christianity of modern times, 
and reveal itself in excess of dogma and organi- 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



147 



zation. It was inevitable that the spirit of the 
Greek philosophy should characterize, in these 
latter days/ a class of thinkers in the Church 
who would chafe under dogmatic authority, re- 
bel against what they might regard as too rigid 
organization, and contend for freedom in sub- 
jecting both the Church and Revelation to 
the test of human reason. It was inevitable 
that there should be a class of men who, start- 
ing with supreme regard for the spiritual in 
Christianity, should attribute to the Scrip- 
tures, in their understanding of them, an au- 
thority which they deny to the Church, and 
accept the traditions of their own school as 
more to be valued than those which have the 
sanction of catholic consent. It is easy to see 
excellences in each of these schools. It is easy 
to see the perils to which the unrestrained de- 
velopment of any of them would lead. Let 
any one of them be separated from the restrain- 
ing influences of the Church, and it would soon 
run into the most dangerous extremes. 

Even within the Church, and under the re- 
straining influence exercised by the presence 



148 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



of other classes of opinion, each of these 
schools has, at least in the case of some of its 
members, and with threatening indication of 
wider defection, gone beyond the limits of the 
legitimate comprehensiveness of the Church, 
and transgressed the boundaries of evangelical 
and catholic truth. There is a latent source 
of error in the exclusive position of each, and 
it flows with ever-increasing volume through 
the logical processes by which the original 
position is developed. Each one, therefore, 
has in it an element of danger for the Church. 

How shall they be restrained and these 
threatening dangers averted ? is a question 
which has always been one of great import- 
ance ; perhaps never of more importance than 
now. It is a vital question in connection with 
the subject we are considering. 

The method which most naturally suggests 
itself, and which has been most frequently 
adopted, is that of repression by ecclesiastical 
authority. It is evidently within the legiti- 
mate province of the Church to protect itself 
from erroneous teaching. The only question 



OF RECONCILIATION. 149 



is by what means that protection can best be 
secured. Let it be by ecclesiastical authority, 
through pains and penalties, if that method, 
and that alone, can succeed. But when we 
remember that we are in the first place to be 
certain that the teaching which we propose to 
repress is erroneous, and, in the second, that 
our attempts to suppress it by force, if it be 
erroneous, may not succeed, we may well 
pause before we proceed in that direction. 
History teaches us a very important lesson in 
this respect, especially the history which this 
generation has been making. The effort 
which has been made in England to restrain, 
by legal proceedings, the excesses of each of 
these schools in turn has been attended only 
with failure, and the present agitation under 
the Public "Worship Regulation Act is most 
disastrous in its effect upon the Church. The 
attempts of the same sort which have been 
made in the Church in this country have been 
no more encouraging. 

It would seem, therefore, that even if such 
proceedings are right in theory they are not 



150 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



practicable in the present state of public opin- 
ion. It is doubtful, however, whether they 
are even theoretically right, in connection with 
any opinions which, by a liberal construction, 
can be regarded as belonging to any one of 
these historical schools. It is not at all un- 
likely that the protection of the Church from 
false teaching may be found, after all, to de- 
pend largely upon the free development of 
these various schools. Each one is held back 
from excess by the restraining influence of the 
others. But if you suppress one, wholly or in 
part, you not only restrain the free develop- 
ment of the Church in that direction, but you 
give undue influence and power to opposing 
tendencies. Suffer all to work freely together, 
and each will prove a conservative power in 
the Church. 

We may go farther even than this. Where 
we have reason to believe there is loyalty to 
Christ and to the Church, a man, so far from 
being restrained, is to be encouraged in the 
avowal of the opinions of any of these histori- 
cal schools within the limits to which his loy- 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



151 



alty will permit him to go. If lie has no true 
loyalty to Christ or the Church, and is only 
making an hypocritical pretext of it, I know of 
no better protection for the Church than that 
which is to be found in the loss of influence 
and power by which such hypocrisy is sure to 
be attended. The bold and frank avowal of 
convictions in regard to this whole class of sub- 
jects is of immense importance to a rich and 
full development of the Church. It is re- 
pressed convictions, and utterances to which 
there is no corresponding belief, that degrade 
individual character and are fatal to any robust 
faith in the Church. 

This strong avowal of personal conviction, 
which I claim should be encouraged rather 
than repressed, is perfectly consistent with the 
toleration, so far as compulsory measures are 
concerned, of opposing convictions. They 
may be tolerated so far as compulsion is con- 
cerned, while they are properly assailed by 
force of argument. They may be tolerated, if 
for no other reason than that they may in that 
way be the more readily restrained. 



152 



THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



I plead for strong individual assertion of 
what seems to each man divine truth, and for 
generous toleration of similar assertion on the 
part of others. It is no compromise of what 
we believe to be truth that I advocate, but 
simply the according to others of what we feel 
to be so solemn a duty for ourselves. But 
there is a deeper reason still for this large and 
brotherly toleration. Our views of truth are 
very limited and partial, and while there are 
certain fundamental principles in regard to 
which we will not admit that there can be any 
reasonable doubt, we have reason to believe 
that there is a higher unity in which these ap- 
parently irreconcilable systems are found to 
enter harmoniously, each necessary to the com- 
pleteness and symmetry of the whole. 

"When we have become familiar with one 
class of phenomena in the heavenly bodies, and 
learned the facts and laws, for instance, of the 
solar system, we are disturbed by revelations 
of nebulae and binary stars. We should have 
expected simply the reproduction through 
space of what we have found so beautiful and 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



153 



admirable in our own system. But the Maker 
of the universe has a higher and all-compre- 
hending unity to which all these diversities 
are subordinated. 

May it not be, after all, that the ultimate 
cause of all these diversities which now so 
greatly disturb us, and seem so inconsistent 
with unity, is to be found in the multitudinous 
aspects of the character and work of Christ ? 
Here there has come to us a Divine Man, 
flooded with the glories of the infinite, the ex- 
press image of God, and men gaze with daz_ 
zled vision at this marvellous revelation and 
then strive to utter what they have seen. No 
wonder that different aspects of the splendor 
have flashed upon different eyes ; and since no 
man, nor all men, have witnessed and can tes- 
tify to the whole glory of this revelation of 
God, no wonder that it is difficult now to 
blend all testimonies into one harmonious rep- 
resentation of what Christ is and what Christ 
has done. Let each man to whose longing 
gaze Christ has manifested himself say freely, 
though he may say with sad imperfection, just 



154 THE CHURCH'S MISSION 



what Christ, in that marvellous experience, 
seemed to him. 

When it was the purpose of David to build 
a temple which should exceed all other struc- 
tures, in stateliness and magnificence, he called 
upon the people to make their offerings for 
the erection of this House of the Lord. There 
were brought to the king, in vast abundance, 
silver and gold and brass and iron and cedar 
wood and hewn stones. When the building 
came to be erected, it rose, without noise of 
hammer, like " a majestic palm in the desert." 
"We are called upon to bring our contribu- 
tions to the building up of the great Church of 
the future, the visible organization of the re- 
deeming work of Christ in our land. We are 
to bring to it the consecration of our lives, 
whatever of natural gifts of learning, or elo- 
quence, or powers of administration, there 
may be among us. We are to bring to it the 
sacrifice of our prejudices, of our partisan 
spirit, of our unholy ambition. We are to 
bring to it glad and grateful recognition of all 
that others can bring. We are to bring to it 



OF RECONCILIATION. 



155 



great heritages from the past which God has 
intrusted to our keeping, but more especially 
all we have of present devotion and grace. 
We are to bring to it our faith in God and 
Christ, our hope for the future of the world, 
our charity for all mankind. This great temple 
of the time to come will be built without the 
touch of human hand, by the power of the 
Holy Ghost. It will rise amid the sur- 
rounding darkness like a vast dome of light, 
as when northern fires flash suddenly and si- 
lently in countless spires through the heavens. 
Though radiant as the luminous sky, it shall be 
as firm and enduring as the everlasting rock. 
O grand and beautiful vision of prophecy, rise 
in all thy glorious reality upon the longing 
eyes of the children of God ! 



APPENDIX. 



The Sermon on Charity and Truth, was requested for 
publication in the following letter : 

Boston, April 14, 1859. 
Eev. and Dear Brother : At our meeting to-da} r , 
in St. Paul's Lecture Room, it was unanimously voted 
by the clergy and laity present to ask of you a copy of 
your able and timely sermon, preached to-day at the 
ordination of Mr. Coolidge ; and the undersigned were 
appointed a committee to carry the resolution into ef- 
fect. 

By complying with the request you will not only 
greatly favor us personally, but also confer a large 
beuefit upon the beloved Church of which we are mem- 
bers, and upon the Christian public, for whose best wel- 
fare we are bound to exert ourselves. 

Your sincere friends and affectionate brethren in the 
ministry of the Gospel. 

Samuel Fuller, 
E. M. P. Wells, 
E. L. Drown. 



reply. 

Boston, April 15, 1859. 
Rev. and Dear Brethren : I have received your 
kind letter requesting a copy of my sermon for publica- 
tion. I cannot well refuse a request the granting of 



ii 



APPENDIX. 



which is, in your opinion, likely to be productive of 
good. 

I should have been glad to enlarge upon some of the 
points contained in the sermon ; but as you have, in a 
certain sense, endorsed it, by requesting its publication, 
I feel bound to publish it, if at all, just as it was delivered. 

I am affectionately your friend and brother, 

John Cotton Smith. 

The Rev. Samuel Fuller, D.D, 
The Rev. E. M. P. Wells, D.D., 
The Rev. E. L. Dkown. 



The Sermon on The Liturgy as a Basis of Christian 
Union, was one of a Course delivered under the auspices 
of the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, and 
afterwards published in a volume. 

The Sermon on the Church's Law of Development, 
was requested in the following letter : 

To the Rev. John Cotton Smith, D.D : 

The undersigned members of the Convention of the 
Diocese of New York, having listened with great pleas- 
ure and satisfaction to your able and eloquent sermon 
preached at the opening services yesterday, desire that 
you would furnish them a copy of the same for publica- 
tion, that their brethren in the Church at large may have 



APPENDIX. 



iii 



an opportunity of sharing in the pleasure and profit 
which they have experienced. 



[signed.] 

The Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, D.D., D.C.L. 



Benjamin I. Haight, 
Morgan Dix, 
Isaac H. Tuttle, 
Henry C. Potter, 
J. H. Rylance, 
Thomas Gallaudet, 
James Starr Clark, 
J. Tuttle Smith, 
Solomon G. Hitchcock, 
Joseph I. Bicknell, 
Brockholst Morgan, 
Romaine S. Mansfield, 
George F. Seymour, 

F. S. Fleischhacker, 
J. Eastburn Brown, 
Albert S. Hull, 
Charles Seymour, 
James W. Sparks, 
William Neters, 
Samuel M. Akerly, 
W. T. Egbert, 

G. H. Smith, 
George W. Ferguson, 
Charles C. Parsons, 
Henry T. Satterlee, 
John P. Lundy, 
Stephen F. Holmes, 
Frederick Ogilby, 
Edmund Guilbert, 

F. B. Van Kleeck, 

William S. 



Edward C. Houghton, 
L. Baily, 
A. F. Olmsted, 
George B. Reese, 
George M. Miller, 
James F. DePeyster, 
Erastus Brooks, 
George Weller, 
George Dorster, 
C.V. R. Ludington, 
W. M. Postlethwaite, 
Cornelius B. Smith, 
Philander K. Cady, 
Francis Harison, 
Caleb Clapp, 
Charles B Coffin, 
John F. Potter, 
John W. Kramer, 
Wm. W. Montgomery, 
A. W. Snyder, 
Walter Delafield, 
R. F. Crary, 

C. T. Woodruff, 
Hiram Roosa, 
James Byron Murray, 
Frederick Sill, 
Arthur H. Warner, 
F. S. Winston, 

D. B. Whitlock, 
Frederic De Peyster, 
Langford. 



New York, Septembe r 27, 1872. 



iv 



APPEXDIX. 



REPLY. 

My Dear Bishop and Brethren of the Clergy 
and Laity : I have received, through the Rev. Dr. 
Haight, your request for the publication of the sermon 
preached at the opening of the late Convention of this 
Diocese. I feel deeply sensible of the honor conferred 
upon me by this departure from ordinary usage, and by 
the kind tribute which was paid to the sermon during 
the session of Convention. 

This has been the more gratifying because it is an 
evidence that the questions which agitate our Church 
can be discussed without bitterness, and that views, 
which in times of excited controversy are sure to be mis- 
undertood, at other times are equally sure to receive a 
fair and generous hearing. 

It is my object in the sermon to show that there are 
inherent tendencies in the Church to the development 
of three schools of opinion, and that while, in my view, 
one of these schools gives a far greater prominence than 
the others to the central truths of the Gospel, yet the 
mutual action and reaction of the three are essential to 
the activity and progress of the Church. As a neces- 
sary consequence of this view, it follows that the true 
method of restraining the undue development and ex- 
aggerations of any one school is not, except in the 
most extreme cases, by ecclesiastical repression, but by 
giving a larger development to the other and counter- 
balancing elements in the Church. 



APPENDIX. 



v 



It is gratifying to me to remember that in a sermon 
preached, at an ordination, in 1859, and requested for 
publication by the clergy present, I endeavored to 
present the same idea. It contains the following lan- 
guage : 

" No one will claim that the best results in Church 
or in State have been brought about by the success of 
the views of one or another party, but by the action 
and reaction of one upon the other. So that it is un- 
questionably a fact that better results have, on the whole, 
been attained by the combined action of these various 
parties, than if one, however pure, had directed and 
controlled the movement alone And that is simply to 
say that God is wiser than any or all of those whom he 
employs as his instruments in the world." 

This view, it seems to me, and this alone, furnishes 
the key to the due restraining and harmonizing, of the 
antagonistic elements in the Church. 

In the hope that through the favor which you have 
been pleased to accord to the sermon, it may help, in 
some degree, to promote that end, I cannot hesitate to 
furnish a copy for publication. 

With great respect and affection, faithfully yours in 
the Church, 

John Cotton Smith. 

Rectory, Church op the Ascension, 
October 5, 1872. 



vi 



APPENDIX. 



The Sermon on the Church's Mission of Reconcilia- 
tion was preached before the Eastern Convocation of 
the Diocese of Massachusetts, and was requested for 
publication in the following letter : 

To the Rev. John Cotton Smith, D.D. 

Rev. and Dear Brother : By vote of the members 
of the Eastern Convocation of the Diocese of Massachu- 
setts, the undersigned were appointed a committee to 
request the publication of the sermon you delivered 
before them to-day in the Church of the Ascension, 
Ipswich. 

We listened with great pleasure to the expression of 
your views as to the mission of our Church in reconcil- 
ing differences, and think the dissemination of such 
views would do much toward giving comfort to minds 
now disquieted by doubts and difficulties. 

We regret that the time usually devoted to the deliv- 
ery of a sermon did not permit you to develop one im- 
portant point you indicated in outline — viz. : " Our 
Church's relationship to other bodies of Christians." 
W r e beg to suggest that such a topic is one of especial 
importance at this time, and that whatever will aid in 
bringing together the scattered members of Christ's flock 
will receive the serious consideration of many who now 
lament our unhappy divisions. 

Thanking you for the pleasure and the instruction 
you have given us, and asking for our brethren the 



APPENDIX. 



vii 



opportunity to enjoy your sermon as we did, we 
remain 

Very truly your friends, 

George W. Shinn, 
Louis De Cormis, 
Bryan B. Killikelly. 
Ipswich, Mass., September 18, 1879. 



REPLY. 

To the Rev. Messrs. George W. Shinn, Louis De Cormis, 
Bryan B. Killikelly, Committee, etc. 
Rev. and Dear Brethren : It gives me pleasure to 
comply with the request of the Eastern Convocation of 
Massachusetts for the publication of my sermon on 
" The Church's Mission of Reconciliation." 

Very sincerely yours, 

John Cotton Smith. 
New York, Ascension Rectory, 
October 1, 1879. 




